


Captured

by kokoligo (kokoliko)



Series: Captured [1]
Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Confessions, Hikaru needs to stop overthinking things, I tried to add the shrug emoji as a tag but it wouldn't let me, M/M, Ogata is a homewrecker, Sai is asexual, Stuff that totes happened after the series ended, Touya needs to eat more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-06-07 18:45:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6819754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kokoliko/pseuds/kokoligo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hikaru's seventeen and facing another slump as a pro, and he's beginning to realize that it's about far more than just go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Atari

There wasn't any way that Hikaru was going to win this one.

He stared at the board in dismay, seeing in his mind's eye the next hand that Touya would play, which he'd counter, and then he'd counter the move that Touya would respond with in the far right corner, then go for the ko...

But it was too late. There was no way to keep black alive. Even Sai would have told him so.

It was just frustrating that this was the fifth game in a row that he'd resigned to Touya, and every time he hadn't even noticed that Touya's stones were slowly encircling his until-- clack-- Touya laid his next one down and Hikaru was suddenly captured.

The seventeen-year-old pro had had spells like this before, but none that lasted over a week. This was day 32. He was losing other matches, starting to doubt himself, doubt that he would get out of this funk again. It was like he was playing in a fog.

He reached across the board, fingers outstretched towards Touya, and played another defensive black stone in the upper right white formation closing in on him. Atari.

But in ten more moves, Touya would come in and take everything.

***

"You shouldn't have responded to me over here," Touya said, pointing with slim fingers to the spot on the goban where Hikaru played atari. The low chatter of the Touyas' dark go salon faded into a hum.

"I know!" said Hikaru with a sigh, blowing another strand of bleached blond hair out of his face. "I played super badly. Again. I just... I didn't feel like ending the game, ok?"

He looked up and met Touya's blue eyes, which flashed with what Hikaru figured was irritation. The boy blinked and kept his eyes lowered as he put the stones away. Hikaru joined in, feeling a pang of guilt for wasting his time.

"You've been struggling lately," Touya finally murmured. He ran the fingers of his left hand over the thin knuckles of his right.

"Yeah."

"...anything the matter?"

"Besides me being scared that I might never get my chops back?" Hikaru sniped rhetorically, but his heart was sinking. "Nothing really."

They put away the last of the stones without another word, just a cascade of small clicks into the wooden goke. Hikaru wondered if maybe he should have been less sarcastic.

Maybe if he'd been more sincere back then, this would have turned into a more comfortable friendship.

"Hey, wanna go eat something?" Hikaru wasn't sure what he might talk to Touya about during dinner, but he'd figure it out.

Touya lowered his goke down onto the board and glanced up the clock. "I'm tutoring someone at seven," he said. "But if you want to do something quick..."

"Ramen!"

The long-haired boy wrinkled his nose.

"Isn't that what we ate last time? And the time before that?"

Hikaru gave him a hopeful grin. "But there's another place I just found two blocks away that I want to try out." His grin widened. "Pleeeeease?"

Touya's sigh sounded exasperated, but Hikaru looked up and spotted a faint Mona Lisa smile tugging at his lips.

"Oh, all right."

It was tiny and disappeared as quickly as it came, but catching even that glimpse of Touya's smile made Hikaru's chest tighten. He frowned and rubbed his sternum with a thumb. He'd felt this pain when facing Touya before-- actually, he'd felt this sudden pain with him on and off for years-- but he usually just tamped it down and pushed it to the back of his mind to keep playing. He chalked it up to nerves, or sometimes indigestion.

But this time they walked outside and the fading light caught Touya's hair and eyes and Hikaru had to try his damndest to stop staring. The pain in his chest doubled like his heart was being squeezed, like a gasp was fighting to escape his lungs.

He started to suspect that maybe it wasn't just on the goban where he couldn't see what was happening until it was too late.

***

They'd been rivals much longer than they'd been friends. After their first few games as children, after it became painfully clear that Hikaru's own go was no match for the terrifyingly powerful ghost in him, Hikaru had avoided running into Touya until he went from an inexperienced kid to insei to pro in the span of a year, and then it was Touya's turn to run from him.

There was once a time when they trained for months or years to face each other, savoring the day when they could see the strength of their future selves. There was a time when their hands shook while opening the goke before matches because they were afraid of how much the other had improved since the last time they met.

Slowly, their lives became full of each other's friendly games, usually at that bright go salon filled with old men who doted on Hikaru, or in that dark one filled with old men who doted on Touya. 

Now, at least once a week, Hikaru got to sit across from the most brilliant person he knew, and watch as that person poured all his focus into his craft.

Hikaru knew why he'd been playing so badly. It was because he could no longer concentrate.

His laserlike focus during games had been so famous that onlookers always commented on how he couldn't even hear his opponent say his name.

Touya was the same way. Until recently, Hikaru didn't notice that Touya's straight face held little emotion because the brain behind it, that extremely polite machine, was busy calculating hundreds of possibilities a minute. His eyes, though-- those blue eyes told a different story, full of the sharp intelligence that let Touya sail through Kaio, augmented with a brazen determination that Hikaru had only seen at full strength in a handful of matches.

It was those eyes that burned into the board, and it was that look that seared itself again and again into Hikaru's mind.

Hikaru's concentration was breaking because he was distracted by the hope that one day Touya would lift those eyes from the board and that gaze could burn into him instead.

But today, with a wordless tap of a stone, Hikaru's black formation in the top right corner died again, and Touya's eyes never met his.

***

"Maybe we should stop playing each other for a while."

Hikaru's voice was low, barely a strangled whisper above the din of the go salon's television. Touya looked up at him, eyes wide. It was day 50 of Hikaru's losing streak. Even Waya had begun to lose hope that his friend would come around.

"Giving up already?" he asked coolly as he put away their game, knowing the choice of words would distract Hikaru from being sad, and he was right. Hikaru seemed to puff up in anger.

"That's not what I meant!" the blond almost shouted, getting up from his seat. "I just need a reset, ok? Like a video game reset!" 

"So you can erase my winning streak from your game?" Touya raised an eyebrow at him, smirking, and Hikaru was both annoyed and... something. Afraid? He narrowed his green eyes.

"You don't even play video games!" he spat. "How do you even know what a reset is?"

"Hikaru-kun, can you quit your bickering with your girlfriend?" Kawai-san's voice yelled from across the room. "I can't concentrate on my game!"

"Oh, fine!" Hikaru yelled back, then, as it slowly dawned on him: "DON'T CALL HIM MY GIRLFRIEND, OLD MAN!"

He knew that Kawai-san was just ragging on him, but then he turned back to Touya, who was rising from his chair.

"I'm heading home," said the boy, avoiding Hikaru's eyes. He was halfway to the door before Hikaru could protest.

"Wait--"

"Let me know whenever you're ready to play again."

"Touya!"

Hikaru tailed him out of the salon and slammed a hand on the elevator door as it was closing. It was one of those old, not very sensitive elevators, so it stubbornly pushed back before re-opening. Hikaru flexed his arm, walked in triumphantly, and stood next to his old rival.

"Sorry for what Kawai-san said in there," he said. "If it makes you feel any better, he always makes fun of me for bleaching my bangs."

"I get that all the time, it's ok," replied Touya, but the silence on the rest of the way down said otherwise. Hikaru glanced over and was surprised to find that Touya's cheeks were tinged with pink, but his head bowed and his dark hair swung forward to obscure the rest of his face.

The elevator doors opened with a ding.

"Give me a call when you're ready to play again, okay?" Touya said through gritted teeth as he walked out the elevator and through the building's main entrance. "Maybe... maybe we can play at the Institute next time."

"Hey, Kawai-san didn't mean it! I'll make him apologize!"

Hikaru reached to grab Touya's shoulder and stop him from leaving, but the boy flinched away. Hikaru's heart plummeted. Touya seemed to realize what he'd done; he finally stopped looking down at his shoes and met the blond's pained face.

"When you're ready to play me, just call," Touya repeated, eyes bluer than ever. Hikaru could feel himself sinking into the linoleum floor. He swallowed hard.

"What if... what if I'm never gonna be able to play you again?"

Touya paused for a long moment and adjusted his collar as he considered this. Then he shrugged and said, very lightly, "Call me anyway."

To someone else it might have sounded flippant, but somehow, thought Hikaru with a tired sigh as he watched his old rival-- old friend-- walk outside into the warm summer evening, somehow that awkward guy knew exactly what to say.

***

Every night after that, Hikaru had the same dream. He and Sai were playing each other in the Room of Profound Darkness at the Go Institute. The air was practically crackling with electricity. He could see Sai's moves play out in front of him, probabilities spinning out like fractals from each slap on the goban, but he slammed a black stone down that interrupted Sai's white formation in the center, and they both knew that the game was over. If they read through to the end, Hikaru would win by two moku. Sai lowered his head in defeat, smiling.

Hikaru pumped a fist in the air and cried out, "Did you see that? I won!" to Touya, who'd been watching. But when he looked over in Touya's direction, there was nothing but an empty seat, and then the fear would set in.

***

Three weeks passed before Hikaru's increasingly alarming dreams started waking him up in a cold sweat, wondering where Touya was. It was another two weeks before he could gather up the courage to check.

"Hello?"

"Touya? It's Shindou."

"Oh! Good." It was just two words, but Touya somehow sounded relieved. So was Hikaru, really. "How are you doing?"

"Um..." Hikaru wasn't about to say 'I'm still losing, but I wanted to call you because I was afraid you'd disappear'. He was breaking into a sweat just hearing Touya's voice for the first time in what felt like forever.

"You're not ready to play yet, are you."

"Heh, yeah..." 'How could he tell?!' "But I was wondering... do you wanna go to a summer festival on Saturday? It's only a few stops from the Institute. They're gonna have fireworks over the river. Thought I could use a breather."

There was a pause long enough for Hikaru to start silently panicking. Would Touya be interested in hanging out outside of playing go? He hunkered down on the staircase by the hallway phone, and was glad that neither of his parents were home to see his face slowly turn cherry red, then blue from holding his breath without thinking.

Finally: "Um, sure. What time?"

Hikaru hadn't gotten this far when he played the conversation out in his head.

"Oh!" He sat up straight. "Oh, uh... um... does... does four sound okay?"

"Sure."

"Great! I'll s-- see you then!"

"Okay. See you."

Hikaru hung up and sank down the staircase to the shiny wooden floor with a loud sigh, then curled into a ball and moaned to no one in particular, "What am I doing?!"

***

Hikaru asked Waya and Isumi to come along to the summer festival as well, after realizing it would look-- and feel-- way too awkward to be hanging out with Touya alone. Plus, he wasn't sure what Touya's conversational skills were like outside of their chosen profession. Not that that had ever been a problem for Hikaru, who could ramble on about pretty much anything, but still.

However, when he spotted Touya's face in the crowded subway station, Hikaru could only wave. The very sight of him made Hikaru go numb. He couldn't keep talking to Waya like that. He could barely even breathe.

Touya was wearing navy kosode robes edged in white, and a pair of black pinstriped hakama that were high enough off the ground to expose his socks and wooden geta. His matching dark haori jacket was tied with white strings that ended in a big fluffy cotton ball just above his navel. Hikaru wasn't surprised that Touya looked completely at home in traditional wear-- after all, Hikaru had never seen Touya's father in Western clothing. He was just surprised to find himself as slack-jawed as all the girls who were openly gaping at the thin teen as he strode across the station, long dark hair fluttering a split a second behind him.

"Are you listening?" Waya turned mid-sentence when Hikaru didn't respond, waved a hand in front of his face, then followed the boy's eyes. "Touya!"

"Looks like he lost weight," noted Isumi, jean jacket draped over an arm.

"Huh? Wasn't he always skinny?"

Before Isumi could elaborate, Touya caught up to them.

"Sorry I was late," he said to Hikaru, who was weirdly silent in response, taking a sudden interest in the sleeves on his bright red happi jacket, which matched Waya's blue one. "Have you been here long?"

"No, not really," said Waya on Hikaru's behalf, giving Touya a sharp look that Hikaru couldn't understand. "We were thinking of hitting up the food booths."

"For ramen, I take it?" Touya smirked, which made Hikaru shake off whatever funk he was in and narrow his eyes.

"So what if it's ramen?" the half-blond shot back, then brightened up. "I'm kinda full, actually. How about ice cream?"

"I'd rather have dango," said Touya.

"Kakigori!" declared Waya, as if that settled it.

"You know, we can all just go to the food booths by ourselves and get our own food, then meet up by the bridge," Isumi pointed out, like a sensible adult. "You don't have to fight about it."

***

The three younger pros ended up fighting about everything anyway. They fought over food, which booths to go to next, what games to play, even what to buy. After a few hours of this, Isumi gave up and went home, with Waya tagging along, clearly fed up with constantly getting dragged into endless bickering even though he was a more than willing participant.

So by the time the fireworks began later that evening, it was just Hikaru and Touya who were trapped in the crush of people by the river. Hikaru ate a stick of green tea dango and watched the fireworks, but his attention briefly strayed during the fifteen-minute show to the boy next to him, whose pale skin was washed in different hues by the bright and colorful display.

Touya had loosened his kosode as the afternoon wore on, leaving his slender neck even more exposed as he looked up at the sky that night. Hikaru's gaze lingered; he wondered what it would be like to lean in, to smell the boy's faint cologne, touch one of his delicate-looking collarbones. It felt like an impossible task. An impossible wish.

Touya glanced over, and his blue eyes found Hikaru's green. Hikaru, startled, immediately returned to looking skyward, but he glanced back too soon and found Touya giving him a small smile. Hikaru returned it with a rakish grin, heart racing; Touya's smile immediately disappeared and, after another loud boom, he turned his attention back to the fireworks, leaving Hikaru flustered.

"It's late," said Touya as the last and flashiest sparklers faded into the night sky and the applause petered out. He swiftly turned heel and tried to join the crowd, which was flowing in the direction of the nearest subway station. "I need to get home."

"What? Wait!" Hikaru grabbed his wrist without thinking, and he had to make up a reason on the spot. "Do you.. Do you wanna light some senko hanabi before you go?"

"Oh," was all Touya could say, his hand limp in Hikaru's grasp. "I think there's already someone on the way to pick me up. But... I have a few minutes."

Hikaru had to fight through the crowd to find the old woman selling bundles of the delicate twisted tissue paper sparklers again, but he bought a set of six sticks without having to haggle too much, and they found a bench by the river that had just been abandoned by a family of four who had been lighting their own sparklers. Hikaru even asked them for the candle they used, and it was still lit.

He handed Touya one of the blue sticks of twisted tissue paper and held out a red one over the candle with two fingers on the other end; it quickly began shooting tiny sparks.

"Bet you can't knock my spark off!"

They used up the first four senko hanabi sparring with the tiny sparklers, trying to knock each other's spark to the ground. But for the last round, they just squatted down by the sidewalk next to the river and let them dangle together, watching the orange sparks flicker outward while the fire slowly burned its way up to their fingers.

"I used to be afraid of these as a kid," said Touya, smiling as the last of the sparks flickered from his paper string. "My father always made me hold one until it went out, and I'd just drop it. I thought the sparks would hurt my fingers."

"I never had that problem," Hikaru told him with a snicker, even though Touya's smile meant that that familiar awful twist in his chest was back. "Guess I always thought the pain was worth it."

A comfortable silence fell between them, punctuated only by the shuffling of feet and the muffled shouts of children from the departing crowd nearby.

"...Shindou?"

There was something about the way Touya said his name that made Hikaru feel like the crowd was pressing in, like they had to go somewhere private, just the two of them, alone. He stood up and jammed his hands into the pockets of his coat, trying to ignore the sensation of fireworks that he felt on his own skin. "Yeah?"

After a long pause, Touya stood up as well, smoothing out his hakama, eyes still fixed on the ground. "Thank you for inviting me here."

It was the blond's turn to smile. "I'm just glad you came! I didn't know if you'd want to have anything to do with me if... if I stopped being good... at..."

His voice trailed off as he glanced up at Touya, who stood there, frozen.

"Oh," Touya said. "You thought I only cared about you because you're good at go?"

Hearing Touya voice it so flippantly made Hikaru feel like an idiot. He gave the long-haired teen a dirty look. "Well, now that you say it like that..."

Touya just sighed and shook his head as he strode into the street. A red sports car was waiting for him.

***

The night after the festival, Hikaru woke up in a cold sweat again, but this time it wasn't because Touya had disappeared in his dream. It was because he dreamt that Touya was right in front of him, blue eyes burning, and he couldn't will himself to look away.

***

The next time he saw Touya was two weeks later, during their same-day matches at the Go Institute. Hikaru's hands immediately clammed up when the boy walked into the room; he tried not to think of all the dreams he'd had recently, dreams that weren't entirely appropriate, in which Touya had been the unwitting star. It was a miracle that Hikaru got through his match against a 4-dan with a four moku loss. He was making stupid mistakes, mistakes that even an insei wouldn't make.

Touya approached and gave the board a once-over just as Hikaru resigned. The smug-looking 4-dan went off to stamp his win, and Touya 6-dan slowly took a seat in his place, Hikaru following with his eyes.

"Well," he said, poking at Hikaru's tiny corner territory outlined in black, "At least it wasn't as bad as your game against Waya-san last week."

Hikaru scowled. "That game wasn't that bad."

"I saw the kifu," Touya replied evenly. "It wasn't a fair fight."

After getting just a glare from Hikaru, he sighed and looked back down at the goban. "You should have responded here," he said, pulling up the sleeve of his blue collared shirt and pointing to a formation that looked like an easily-stoppable white invasion that spiraled out of control. "I don't know why you didn't see that."

He paused, expecting Hikaru to vehemently fire back, but all the blond could do was stare at Touya's hand as it hovered over the board.

"You ARE way skinnier," Hikaru said, voice suddenly soft. Touya raised an eyebrow and started to pull his hand back, but Hikaru reached out and took Touya's exposed wrist. It was barely thicker than the widest part of a go stone; he curled his thumb and forefinger around it easily, with plenty of room to spare. "Isumi-kun was right. You weren't always this skinny, right? You're like a stick now!"

It was a few seconds before the shock wore off Touya's face, but then he narrowed his eyes and yanked his hand back.

"Never mind," he said gruffly, standing up. Hikaru realized that maybe Touya was already taunted for being thin, and maybe his words cut in a little too harshly. He tried to grab his friend's arm again to stop him from leaving, but Touya again jerked away.

"Hey, I wasn't making fun of you!" Hikaru called loudly as Touya left the room, making more than a few heads turn. "Do-- do you wanna get lunch? Hey!"

He practically had to run out of the room to catch Touya in the entrance as he was putting his shoes on. "I didn't mean to offend you," said Hikaru, looking miserable. "I was just..."

His voice failed him because his heart was sinking to the pit of his stomach, taking any words with it. He tried again. "Hey, let's get lunch, okay? My treat."

Touya slipped on his loafers and stood up, giving Hikaru a glare like he was still going to storm out of the building anyway. But, to Hikaru's amazement, the long-haired boy's glare slowly melted away, leaving his tired blue eyes meeting Hikaru's deep green.

"No ramen," he deadpanned, and Hikaru's eyes lit up like the world had burst into color.

"No ramen!" the blond agreed without a second thought. It was the first time Touya had witnessed Hikaru so willingly consent to not eating his favorite food.

***

They settled on a kaitenzushi restaurant. Touya had first offhandedly suggested a pricier sushi place, but Hikaru's long "umm..." upon hearing the name of the famous restaurant made Touya hastily name another one.

In spite of it not being ramen, it was Hikaru who still did most of the eating. The chef in front of them gave them both a funny look from across the conveyor belt of dishes as the half-blond stuffed a piece of sashimi into his mouth and added the small rectangular plate it came from to one of the two piles of plates on either side of him.

"You're the one treating ME, right?" Touya asked, chopsticks hovering uncertainly, after Hikaru approached plate number twenty. The boy shrugged and dipped a corner of an ice cream cone-size hand roll into his tiny dish of soy sauce and took a huge bite. 

"I haven't eaten out since that festival," he said. "And it's only two hundred yen a plate!"

"Hikaru, that's four thousand yen's worth of sushi for you already."

Hikaru was smiling inwardly at the mention of his first name, but then his eyebrows knitted together. He swallowed a giant piece of broiled salmon. "Wait, four?"

"I knew it," said Touya, shielding his face with a hand. "You can't do any math in your head, can you."

"What! That's not true," Hikaru protested through a mouthful of rice after shoving the rest of the hand roll into his mouth. "I count territory in my head all the time!"

"Fine, you're only terrible at math when it doesn't have to do with go," Touya declared, dipping a tiny corner of his toro in soy sauce. "...which is ridiculous because you're brilliant when it comes to go."

Hikaru's chewing slowed, then he swallowed and stopped. He set his chopsticks down on his plate.

"I'm not," he said quietly. "I can't even play anymore."

Touya gave him a long look, like he was about to say something, but then shut his mouth and turned back to his food. They ate in silence for a while, but Touya started to grab more plates from the conveyor belt one by one, offering them to Hikaru first.

"Look, it's uni." The boy held out a green plate of sea urchin nigiri.

Hikaru waved it off. "Go ahead."

"Want some of my unagi?"

"I'm good, thanks." The blond was beginning to feel a tingling in his stomach after the concern Touya was showing for him, but he looked away and forced himself to shelve it.

"Maguro?" Touya showed him a plate containing two pieces of tuna, to which Hikaru shook his head, then thought better of it and took a piece off with his fingers and popped it into his mouth whole. The effect was that of a peace offering; with that bite, the silence that had seemed so tense had dissolved into a familiar, more comfortable lull in conversation.

"I think playing go for you is probably like being an artist," said Touya after a while, his short stack of plates still no comparison to Hikaru's towers. "Remember when you stopped playing for a while? It came back to you eventually, right?"

Hikaru's forehead knitted at the painful memory. Touya saw this and stopped talking immediately.

"Maybe I should try playing someone," said Hikaru. "When I stopped playing that time, Isumi-san begged me to play him. It made me realize how much I wanted to."

"Then play me," said Touya, eyes suddenly ablaze. "We haven't played in six weeks."

"No, not you!," Hikaru objected almost immediately, then winced as he watched his rival's eyes lose their luster. "I mean, it wouldn't be fair. I want to face you when I'm at my best!"

He sighed, reaching for his gray cup of tea, as Touya's look changed from hurt to confused. They were, in fact, closely matched in skill.

Only Hikaru knew why the fight wouldn't be fair.

Silence settled again like a weight between the two teens. It was augmented by the loud mechanic hum of the sushi conveyor belt, which seemed like it was trying to do the talking for them.

"Well," said Touya finally, raising his head to face Hikaru with those blue eyes. "I'll be waiting for you."

Hikaru smiled wanly at the sentiment, but that pang in his heart had returned.

"I miss playing you," he blurted out. "You're so nice to me now."

The long-haired boy raised his eyebrows, face flushing.

"You miss me being mad at you all the time?" he asked in disbelief. The look of indignant incredulity made Hikaru grin despite himself.

"It's because you always get that look on your face!"

***

It wasn't until long after they'd both gone home and Hikaru was back in his bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying how he'd tried to explain why he enjoyed making Touya mad because of that look on his face, that he realized he had inadvertently told Touya that he liked his face.

***

Another month passed before Hikaru started hearing rumors.

"Touya's gotten so thin!"

"I know teenagers can grow like weeds, but he hasn't been eating very much..."

"What do you think happened?"

"I heard his parents weren't talking to each other."

"Maybe he's just stressed out."

"Guess who I saw in Kabukicho..."

"Did something happen with his father in China?"

"Ashiwara seemed very worried about him."

"His eyes look so tired."

"Touya fainted during his match today."

That last one made Hikaru snap to attention. He and Waya were sitting by the large windows at NcDonald's again, and he was picking at his fries as Waya, between bites of his Big Nac hamburger, filled him in on the latest news.

"Touya fainted?!" Hikaru was almost shouting in shock. "Is he sick?"

"They said he'd lost like twenty pounds or something," said his red-haired batchmate, stealing one of his fries. The half-blond boy didn't even notice. "Come to think of it, he was pretty skinny when we went to that festival last month."

"Which hospital is he at?" Hikaru demanded, standing up. It was Waya's turn to be surprised.

"Hey, you're not gonna visit him right now, are you? You're not done with your own match!"

"Which hospital?" Hikaru asked again as he took his tray off the table. He was about to dump the contents in the trash when Waya intercepted and snagged the rest of his fries and his drink. "Is it the same one Touya's dad stayed at?"

"Yeah, I think so. Hey, wait!"

But Hikaru had already fled down the stairs.

***

The waiting room of the hospital wing that the concierge nurse pointed him to was filled with dozens of well-wishers, from older pros Hikaru knew were acquainted with Touya Meijin to young girls in their Kaio school uniforms carrying balloons and flowers for the teen prodigy. Hikaru took a seat next to a pigtailed pair of them, one of whom shot him a look, then promptly nudged the other.

After waiting maybe twenty minutes on one of the sea green and salmon pink pleather seats, Hikaru couldn't stand it anymore. He was starting to fidget nervously, and he'd already greeted a few pros he knew but for the life of him couldn't remember their names. But nothing else really mattered except seeing if Touya was all right, so it seemed pointless to be sitting around, looking at the clock every few seconds, twiddling his thumbs.

Ogata-sensei poked his blond head out of room B-24; Hikaru could see the man's eyes widen behind his stylish glasses.

"Shindou-kun?"

Ogata's voice could barely hide the note of surprise. He turned back to someone in the room. "Oi, Ashiwara! Could you ask Akira-kun if it'd be ok to let Shindou in?"

After a minute or two, Ogata stuck his head back out and motioned at Hikaru to come in, which the boy did with trepidation. He wasn't sure how exactly he would handle the room full of adults with Touya. He just barreled into the hospital wanting to know if the boy would be all right.

The room was as small and sparse as Touya Meijin's was when he was hospitalized, though the view implied otherwise. And with Ogata, Ashiwara, and Touya's mother attending to Touya, Hikaru had to tread inside carefully.

"I'm... coming in."

"Shindou!"

Hikaru finally saw Touya's face at the end of the hospital bed and heaved a sigh of relief. The long-haired boy looked paler than usual, but otherwise fine-- maybe an IV drip, but no electrodes or breathing apparatus, and his eyes seemed bright. The half-blond suddenly felt quite shy.

"Hi Touya! It's, um, good to see you." He scratched his head, tearing his eyes away from Touya's face, feeling the gaze of Touya's mother and the other pros on him. "I was... I was wondering if you were okay. And... and if I can help with anything..."

Touya smiled at him so easily, given his situation. "Thanks for worrying about me."

"The doctor said his blood sugar was just too low," said Mrs. Touya, an arm resting on the hospital bed's plastic railing as she stood next to her son. "He's probably fine, but he hasn't had much of an appetite lately, so they're running a few tests to make sure it isn't related."

At that remark, Touya's smile disappeared, and his gaze turned to the tree out the window. Hikaru snuck another glance at him, and for a brief second when Touya looked back, their eyes met.

"He hasn't been eating when he's at my house, either," Ogata added in a very adultlike fashion-- that is, speaking as if Touya weren't in the room. "Maybe some miso soup. I took him out for sushi the other day, and he wouldn't even eat his favorite toro." He turned to Hikaru. "If you want to give me a hand, make sure he eats when he's at the Institute, all right? His mother and I can only keep tabs on him for so much of the day."

"I'll do my best," Hikaru said, bowing slightly. "Even if I have to drag him out by his hair!"

The adults (Ashiwara-san sort of counted as an adult) laughed at this, while Touya bowed his head in embarrassment. Hikaru excused himself shortly after to run back to the game he was about to forfeit after an extra-long lunch.

But he paused on his way out, with his hand on the doorknob while the others talked among themselves, and allowed his gaze to linger on Touya's pale face for entirely too long. After a few moments, Touya's blue eyes were gazing right back at him, and Hikaru could feel his breath catch.

He grinned in return and yanked the door open with as much force as he could muster, and sprinted down the hallway, nurses' surprised shouts nonexistent in his ears, heart hammering, a strange suspicion-- a wild hope-- springing in his chest.

*** To be continued ***


	2. Ko

The Sai in Hikaru's dreams never talked. He was never as boisterous or animated as he had been when he was taking up residence in Hikaru's waking mind. In Hikaru's dreams, Sai didn't throw childlike tantrums when he couldn't play go, nor did he watch fishtanks or trains with rapt attention. He merely sat before Hikaru, white and purple robes impeccable as always, long hair flowing down his waist, lightly clutching his fan. A wistful smile played on his lips.

Hikaru wanted to reach out and wrap his arms around the older man. He wanted to bury his face in Sai's robes, grab fistfuls of Sai's soft hair, cry into Sai's shoulder as much as his lungs would allow. But even when they had been together every day, he couldn't really touch Sai's ethereal form. All he could do was sense Sai's emotions when they were strong enough.

Hikaru could feel those emotions now. Sai's heart flooded his with warmth and longing, a deep sadness, a searing pain. He looked into Sai's gray eyes and found overwhelming happiness and grief there that mirrored Hikaru's own.

But then those eyes suddenly turned a familiar shade of blue-green, and Hikaru gave a shout of surprise.

He sat straight up, startled, and found himself in his bed in the dark at an ungodly hour in the morning. He took a minute to calm his heart before settling back into sleep. But as he laid his half-blond head against his pillow, Hikaru found that his face was drenched with tears.

***

Hikaru had no games that afternoon, so he plopped himself down in the Shindou household's small kitchen and had an extended lunch with his long-suffering mother. He couldn't normally spend five minutes with his mom without being frustrated by her many questions, but she sensed that something was off with him that day and unloaded some of her worries onto him instead. Her suspicions were confirmed when, instead of getting annoyed, Hikaru proved to be a patient audience.

"Gramps is probably fine," he said as he complimented her homemade ramen noodles with another satisfied slurp. "He has a bunch of friends at his go salon. If you're worried about him being alone, maybe you should tell him to go on a vacation with them."

"Hikaru, are you all right?" Mrs. Shindou asked bluntly, shaking more togarashi into her bowl. "You seem a little down today."

"What? It's nothing!" he said hastily, taking more interest in the iced tea she had set out for him than he usually did. His mother sighed and rested her chin in one hand, elbow propped up on the table. Hikaru noticed the lines starting to gather in her forehead.

"We worry about you a lot, you know," she said, putting her chopsticks down to cool herself with a straw fan. "Dad and I can hardly play go, so we don't know what life is like for you and your grandpa. You don't bring any friends home, either." She heaved another a sigh. "Whatever happened to Akari-chan? Is she too busy with her high school friends?"

Hikaru winced inwardly. He and Akari were still friendly and occasionally ran into each other around the neighborhood, but ever since that one go tutoring session before middle school graduation that ended with Akari kissing him and him not kissing back, they hadn't spoken to each other aside from exchanging awkward pleasantries.

"Yeah, she's busy," he said as casually as he could manage. "I'm busy too."

"That's too bad," Mrs. Shindou remarked, waving her fan. "She's a sweet girl. I actually kind of hoped you two would start dating."

"Mo-om!"

Feeling too awkward to discuss the topic any further, Hikaru finished the rest of his soup in a single gulp and stood up to go back to his room. "Uh, thanks for lunch. I'm gonna go study now."

"Don't wear yourself out with work, okay? Don't be like your dad."

"I won't!"

***

Hikaru sprinted up the stairs and retreated to the safety of his room. He sat on the floor in front of his goban and shook his head with a laugh, then picked up the two goke and started laying out stones.

The game he wanted to replay without thinking was an old one-- one from a couple of months before Sai disappeared. Sai was white, but he easily took over Hikaru's corners and made up for the handicap with a few well-placed moves.

Hikaru gingerly laid each stone down and felt Sai's energy flowing from his fingertips. He could see the formations Sai was setting up dozens of moves in advance, white stones creeping into the corners of Hikaru's seemingly impenetrable black fortresses.

It was beautiful go. He just couldn't see it at the time.

About an hour passed before he heard a knock on his door.

"Hikaru?" his mom's voice called from the other side. "There's a Touya Akira-kun here to see you!"

"WHAT?!"

Hikaru heard the door open, and in a moment of panic he swept his hand across the goban, sending stones flying. He turned around and saw Touya's slim figure filling the doorway. The boy's hair had grown past his shoulders but he left it untied, and he was wearing jeans instead of his usual trousers.

"Touya! What are you doing here?" Hikaru yelled as he backpedaled away, but quickly realized how rude that probably looked and sounded. "I mean, you scared me!"

"It's nice to finally meet some of Hikaru's pro friends," Mrs. Shindou said, beaming, completely ignoring Hikaru's shocked expression. "I'll bring you two some iced tea."

As she turned and left, Touya stayed rooted in the doorway, his eyes lowered. Hikaru noticed the dark circles underneath.

"Sorry for not calling you in advance," Touya said softly.

"No! No, it's fine," Hikaru replied with a shaky grin, picking his scattered stones up as he shuffled across the room on his knees. Some went behind his headboard, so he ducked his head and shoulders in and stuck an arm out blindly and hoped it wasn't too dusty back there. "I just... really didn't expect to see you."

"Can I come in?"

"Yeah, of course-- ow!"

There was a loud thunk as Hikaru forgot he was wedged in sideways behind his bed. He heard a stifled chuckle from the other boy and the click of the door closing and abruptly remembered the things he'd been dreaming about for weeks, and then his palms started sweating profusely, despite the air conditioning unit above his window being on at full blast.

He emerged from behind the bed, shaking the dust from his hair, as Touya sat himself down in an apprehensive seiza in front of the goban. But Hikaru noticed his eyes weren't even on the remaining stones on the board; Touya's eyes were looking around very curiously.

"What's up?" Hikaru asked, plopping down on the other side of the goban. Touya's shoulders tensed, and his eyes went back to being downcast. 

"My parents are fighting," he said quietly. His hands balled up into fists on his knees.

"Oh..."

Come to think of it, Hikaru had heard around the Institute that Touya's father was back from China. He set a goke on his lap and returned some black stones into it. "Is that why you haven't been eating much? Is it stressing you out?"

Touya opened his mouth to speak, but then Hikaru's bedroom door opened again.

"Here you go!" his mother called out cheerily, setting down a tray of two iced barley teas next to the goban. "Don't hesitate to come get me if you need anything, okay?"

"Sure Mom," Hikaru said, completely distracted, as he watched Touya bow and murmur his thanks.

"Mind if we play?" Touya asked once Mrs. Shindou left the room. Hikaru ran a hand through his hair uneasily, but nodded and picked up a black stone to nigiri.

Hours later, the setting sun was dyeing the sky purple, and the cicadas at the park outside were so loud that their alien chorus of "Mi, mi, mi"s could be heard through the closed window and over the din of the air conditioner. The two boys had not spoken a word to each other, but words weren't necessary; the stones did the talking for them. Once they finished the end game and filling in territory, they both stared at the board for another few minutes.

White, which was Hikaru, had won by two and a half moku. It wasn't a great game for either side. They had both played so badly that neither felt the need to discuss it. But it was a close match, with Touya handicapped by the stress of his family situation, and Hikaru handicapped by the devastating urge to reach out and touch his rival's face.

"Thank you," Touya said finally. He took a long drink of tea.

"We're both kind of a mess right now, huh," Hikaru said in lieu of a proper reply, mouth suddenly parched as he tried not to stare at Touya's throat.

"Yeah."

Touya set his glass down on the tray and stayed silent. Hikaru felt beads of sweat forming on his forehead. He took his own glass, which had been untouched, and tried to cool his palms with it.

"Hey, so why come to my house?" he asked, trying to break the tension. "You could have gone to, like, Ogata-sensei's place or someth--"

"Ogata-san is sleeping with my mother."

Hikaru's mouth dropped open, and after a protracted moment, Touya rushed at him with a look of concern. It took another second of confusion and a little wetness in his lap for Hikaru to realize that he'd dropped his glass onto his shorts, and that Touya had just darted a hand out and righted it onto the floor before any more liquid could spill out.

But that meant Touya was right next to him now, and Hikaru could see the wetness in the corners of his eyes threatening to spill over. Before he could stop himself, Hikaru reached out and wiped one of Touya's tears away with a traitorous knuckle.

"Don't cry," Hikaru heard himself saying brokenly, and watched as tears ran down Touya's sallow cheeks unbidden. Even as he sobbed, Touya fought to regain his composure. Hikaru dropped his hands into his damp lap, tea rapidly drying, and stubbornly swallowed down the impulse to lean in.

They stayed that way for a minute until Touya cleared his throat, lifted his head, and swept his hair back, trying to dislodge the strands that tears had stuck to his cheeks. He wiped his eyes with the back of one hand and started to put the stones away. Hikaru joined him, mind and heart racing.

"Sorry for bothering you," Touya whispered as put the lid back on his goke and pushed himself to his feet. He had one hand on the doorknob before Hikaru got up and took his wrist.

"Akira," Hikaru said slowly, green eyes smoldering. A thought had just flown into his head-- he knew how to make Touya feel better. "If you trust me, can I show you something?"

"What is it?"

The blond led Touya back to the goban, and they took their respective seats. Hikaru's hands trembled as he opened both gokes and set them down by his knees. He picked up a black stone and laid it on the board, then a white one, then black, recreating the game again from memory. Touya followed Hikaru's hands with his eyes; Hikaru saw him nod at the familiar opening, but a few dozen moves later, the boy's aquamarine eyes went wide.

"Black is you," said Touya, hand covering his mouth. "But... white is also you. You from before."

"It's Sai," Hikaru answered simply as he continued to set stones down one by one. After putting the last stone into place, the one at which he'd resigned, Hikaru glanced up at his rival, and found the long-haired teen meeting his eyes with a tired but tender smile.

*** To be continued ***


	3. Hane

"Show me another game."

"I'm tired."

"Please?"

"I gave you the kifu for three games!"

"I like it better when you show me."

"But you already made me show you one today!"

"I'll buy you ramen."

"It's too hot for ramen," Hikaru wailed, burying his head into his arms.

Akira had been treating Hikaru to lunch for the past week. It was day five of Akira showing up to Hikaru's go salon and the half-blond was almost getting sick of his favorite food. When he showed Akira that one game between him and Sai, he only had a faint inkling of the floodgates that he opened.

Hikaru refused to divulge any more details about Sai besides his untimely disappearance. He promised Akira not to ask any questions, and Akira quickly acquiesced; he was just glad that Hikaru finally admitted he knew Sai, and he couldn't get enough of seeing Hikaru's games with the mysteriously strong Go master with the ancient technique. Hikaru had to wrack his memory-- and his kifu records-- for more.

And it felt odd to be receiving so much attention from his normally reserved rival. Kawai-san and the other patrons usually made Akira visibly uncomfortable after a few minutes, but it seemed like he was enduring everyone's teasing so he could talk to the half-blond. And usually Hikaru could get away with staring at the long-haired boy for as long as he dared, especially when they were playing a game alone. Now he'd occasionally glance up and see Akira's intense eyes boring into him. It was a little unnerving.

Hikaru looked up from where he'd buried his head and found that exact sight: Akira sitting right next to him, aquamarine eyes drilling into his own. Out of curiosity, Hikaru held that gaze, wondering how long it would be before Akira blinked. But both of them kept staring; soon they'd been looking at each other for much longer than Hikaru had ever allowed himself to look, and his heart only beat faster. Akira probably thought that he was just playing a game of chicken, but with each tick of the clock, Hikaru could feel himself sinking further into the floor.

"Well?" said Akira finally, resting an elbow on the table right next to the blond. Hikaru sighed and hoped he wasn't trembling.

"No," he replied matter-of-factly.

"Oh, come on!"

***

It became harder and harder to go over Sai's old games once Hikaru started to recall his memories of when they were first played.

The blond was laying out another of Sai's matches for Akira a couple of months later, the latest in the dozens that Akira demanded he play. They were alone in the Touyas' large, cold, empty house again, in the tatami-lined sitting room, but it was a familiar sight now.

Akira's father was abroad as usual, and his mother had all but vanished, but the boy had already been practically living by himself just fine. Hikaru felt a little uneasy when he first realized they would be alone in this house quite often, but he had learned how to manage it. He learned to control that twisted-stomach feeling he got whenever the front door opened and he walked inside and held a bag of his mother's bento lunches out for Akira to take, and he watched Akira's face melt into a reserved smile.

The paper-gridded shoji doors were open to the garden, and the gentle rush of the koi pond outside broke the silence; this time, Akira's gaze was locked on the board as Hikaru laid everything down.

It wasn't exhausting to just put down the stones, but his dreams-- his memories-- of Sai grew more and more vivid each night that he recreated a game for his rival. He was still losing all his matches and losing more sleep, and soon enough, memories began to flow from each hand-- what he was thinking, what Sai was saying...

"Are you okay?"

He looked up and Akira was staring at him again, this time with a softer look. The blond realized that his hand was resting in the black goke. He had stopped putting stones down; his eyes felt wet.

"He yelled at me for this move," Hikaru said quietly, laying down a black stone in atari, which would later be the opening for Sai to tear down his left flank-- something Hikaru didn't see coming because he was just an insei. "My mom almost made me stop playing that night, we were screaming so loud. But then he felt bad and said sorry after I lost. He never stayed mad at me."

Akira looked at the stone, then at Hikaru's glistening eyes in surprise.

"I didn't realize this was so hard for you," he said. "You... you can stop if you want."

"I was always complaining about how he wouldn't let me stop," Hikaru continued, voice low. His hands balled into fists on his knees. "Even on the day he disappeared, I was complaining about how he kept making me play him.

"I thought he was gonna be with me forever."

Hikaru let out a long breath, but caught Akira's concerned eyes watching him and eked out a half-laugh.

"Man, I must really like you if I'm telling you all this," he murmured distractedly, rubbing at his eyes and dipping a hand back into the goke of white stones with a faint smile, then freezing at his own choice of words. He gathered his wits and placed another stone before glancing at Akira to see if the boy had noticed.

Unfortunately, those deep blue eyes were still trained on him, and this time Hikaru couldn't force himself to look away.

"Who was he?" Akira finally asked, gaze locked in.

"Stop it," said Hikaru, sensing the danger lurking behind the question. He was about to put his hand in the goke and take out another stone, but picked up his fan instead.

"Why did--"

"You promised."

"Did you--"

"YOU PROMISED!"

"Hikaru..."

Upon hearing his given name, the blond winced as he immediately heard the echoes of another voice in a higher pitch-- a pleading, playful whine. He couldn't look away, but tears began to run down his flushed cheeks. His chest constricted in pain, both from the memory of Sai and from the sound of Akira's anguished voice.

"Shut up," Hikaru whispered desperately. He felt like he was drowning in Akira's eyes.

"Why can't you tell me?" Akira cried in frustration, slamming a hand on the tatami floor.

Hikaru shut his eyes tight, but tears still managed to fight their way down his face. Akira sat on the other side of the goban frozen in stunned silence, looking on helplessly as his friend's shoulders started shaking with sobs.

After a minute or two, Hikaru managed to put himself back together. He set the fan down, wiped his wet face on his yellow hoodie, picked up the closest goke, and put it on his lap so he could feel the weight in his hands, feel grounded. Then he opened it and took a few stones.

"I'm showing you everything," he told the dark-haired boy, voice breaking, as he put another stone down on the goban, then another. "Only you, because you're the only one who understands who he was.

"I took him for granted. You never did."

Akira wordlessly followed Hikaru's hands as he quickly drew the beginnings of a game on the board.

"This was the last game we ever played," the boy said as he set the last black stone into place and stood up. "I never got to finish it."

He strode down the hallway and out of the empty house before Akira could think to stop him.

***

Another week, another loss, but Hikaru stopped caring. He'd show up to the Go Institute, play his match as quickly as possible, then leave before anyone could pull him into their office and yell at him for doing the bare minimum to stay a pro.

This time, though, Akira was there. He was losing matches as well-- not as many, but the buzz surrounding Hikaru's losses was nothing compared to what Akira was going through. The rumor mill was beginning to piece together what the boy had told Hikaru that summer, and Weekly Go was getting borderline obnoxious in their sending of reporters to trail the Touya family, even across Asia. Akira began to tie his shoulder-length hair up and debut an increasingly varied collection of hats and sunglasses whenever he entered the Go Institute.

Hikaru was glad he'd brought his own lunch that day, because after their last set of matches he found Akira on the second floor eating alone in a corner of a mostly-empty break room, back to the door. Without asking, the blond boy pulled up a chair from the opposite end of the table and plopped it down right next to his rival, startling him.

"Hik-- Sh-- Shindou." Akira jumped a little bit more than Hikaru was expecting him to, which was weird because it was usually he who surprised people by appearing out of nowhere.

"Ah... h-- hey, Touya."

Hikaru's heart started hammering when he realized that Akira had switched back to using his last name on purpose. Why? They'd gradually been using each other's given names. Was Akira not comfortable with saying his name anymore?

He cleaved open the chicken katsu bento his mother prepared for him and chowed down so he wouldn't psych himself out. Maybe sitting next to Akira wasn't a good idea.

"You should have connected that formation in the top right first," Akira said by way of conversation. He was holding on to his store-bought salmon bento's splintery wooden chopsticks a little too tightly. He wasn't talking about today's game.

"I could have," Hikaru replied. "But I wanted to see where he was going."

They both continued eating. Akira only wanted half his salmon and was just picking at grains of rice at this point, but Hikaru ate at twice his speed, so they finished at about the same time.

"Have you ever continued that game?" Akira asked as he took a sip of his bottled green tea. Hikaru shrugged.

"Of course not."

"Haven't you ever even tried? Not even in your head?"

"I'm not sure I want to."

"I could try to play as him," Akira suggested, but at this proposition Hikaru snapped his bento box shut.

"You can't play as him," he said coldly. "You can't even come close."

But any anger the blond felt at his rival suggesting such a thing instantly evaporated into remorse once he glanced over and saw that Akira looked like he'd been slapped. His head was bowed as if he'd lost, long dark hair dancing over the table.

"You're right," said Akira, voice wavering. "I can't."

He stood up abruptly, grabbed his things, and rushed out of the room.

***

There were moments when he wanted to go outside, get some fresh air, see the leaves changing on the trees. Waya and Isumi had called countless times, but his cell phone was off and he'd made his parents take messages when they tried to call the house. Akari even came by one weekend from her college to check in on him, probably to ask if his horrible losing streak had improved.

But Hikaru stayed in his room for days, not eating much, barely talking to anyone, and in between his dream visions of Akira and Sai and endless games of go against himself, he would drift in and out of consciousness and wish he could just fall asleep and dream of nothing.

'You can't play as him. You can't even come close.'

Hikaru wished he could take those hurtful words back. But he wasn't sure if he could bring himself to apologize when Akira kept pushing him to tell him more, show him more, uncover all the most vulnerable parts of himself that he couldn't, under any circumstances, reveal.

Revealing them would mean Akira would be closer to his secret. And there was no way he would lose Akira, too.

But then came a knock he'd been half-hoping for. The door creaked open.

"Sorry to disturb you."

Akira's voice.

He was wearing a black turtleneck that now seemed a little small but still stylish, and his hair was only getting longer, hanging freely down past his shoulders. Hikaru sat straight up on the bed, dressed only in one of his old T-shirts and a pair of gym shorts; he hoped Akira couldn't hear his heart slamming over and over against the inside of his chest.

Akira saw the finished game on the goban next to the bed, so he naturally sat seiza on the one pillow in front of it, sizing it up for several minutes. It was Hikaru against himself; Hikaru knew he would know.

"Maybe you can play me instead," said Akira.

"What?"

"Play me," he repeated, blue eyes firm with an emotion Hikaru couldn't quite place. "You regret complaining to him, right? You regret not playing him as much as possible when you had the chance?

"I'm not Sai. I'll never be Sai. But... you can play me as much as you want.

"Please."

Hikaru's heart skipped a beat as he suddenly realized what that gaze meant. That whole time when he was afraid he wasn't good enough to play Akira, Akira was himself afraid that Hikaru didn't find him good enough to be a rival.

Akira was afraid because he wasn't as good as Sai.

Hikaru ran a hand through his half-blond hair and finally smiled. He slowly made his way from the bed to the floor and picked up a black stone to nigiri.

"But if I suck, don't forget to yell at me for being stupid, all right?"

It was Akira's turn to go "What?"

***

The game was messy and a little out of character for both of them-- forced hands all over the place, stones sacrificed every which way, moves straying from any commonly-used patterns, unfinished battles and impasses in every corner. But it was intense go, and brilliant, full of inspired moves, nothing like the game they played when Akira first visited, and nothing that either of them had ever played before.

Once it was over, they both sat there and silently drank the final board in, burning the kifu into their memories. For anyone used to the regular joseki, the formations were unorthodox and hard to follow, but somehow the two of them remembered every single hand the other had played, and would be able to play the game back for themselves for as long as they lived.

Then, without a word, they collected each other's stones, then played another game, and then another, and another, past dinner, well after bedtime, until the sky turned light.

Hikaru came to several hours later in a narrow futon on the floor, snug between a half-finished game on the goban and his Western-style bed, curled on his side and facing the bed, chaotic dreams of sente lingering in his sleep-addled brain. Without thinking, he groggily started to reach up and probe into his bed with a clumsy hand so he wouldn't have to sit up to see if his bed was still occupied, but his hand bumped into the warmth of an arm that was already hanging right by his face.

"Oh good," he mumbled, pulling his hand away, but not after his fingertips lingered a little too long on Akira's milky skin.

"...Huh?"

Thankfully, Akira didn't seem to be fully awake either.

"Nothin'."

Hikaru turned over, away from the bed and the window's bright morning light.

"You're just... still here."

*** To be continued ***


	4. Sente

They were almost back to normal. They were calling each other by their last names again, Akira stopped asking Hikaru to show him Sai's games, they were even arguing over each others' hands as usual.

And Hikaru became exceedingly proficient at distracting himself with random observations (like 'I wonder how often they clean the ceiling fans here?') whenever there was a lull in their arguments, because Akira would eventually turn away in a huff, then Hikaru would see his face soften into a faint smile, and that was usually when Hikaru's heart would plummet with the same two thoughts-- one, 'He's beautiful', and two, 'He'll never be mine'.

Hikaru was by now pretty sure this horrible feeling was him falling in love, but he couldn't really believe that because being in love was supposed to feel awesome, right? It was supposed to be the best feeling in the world.

This feeling just made him want to throw up.

***

Hikaru was still losing all of his pro games. As much as he could play brilliant, inspired games against Akira, as soon as he sat in front of a goban across anyone else in a formal match, his flame went out. He even stopped going to Waya's study group because everyone from Morishita 10-dan's study group started to rag on him. 

"Shindou, what the hell is this."

His match was against Waya today. His rust-haired friend was grimacing so much that you could almost see a vein pop out of his temple. Waya was already mad that Hikaru went missing from their friend group for long stretches of time, but this... Hikaru bowed his head in embarrassment.

"I know, I know."

"Seriously, this is some basic-- I mean, how could you even mess up this joseki?!"

Waya sat up and pointed emphatically at an erroneously-placed formation in the upper-right star as he yelled at Hikaru in the match room. A couple of players "shush"ed him; he sank back into a cross-legged position in defeat.

"Damn it," he muttered, looking up at Hikaru's sad face and sighing. The seventeen-year-old didn't even snipe back. "Well, whatever. Do you wanna go get lunch?"

But Hikaru's eyes were now fixated on something behind Waya. He turned around, following Hikaru's gaze, and saw in the hallway a familiar tall blond in his signature double-breasted white suit.

"Ogata-san!" Waya whispered in a low voice. "Shindou, did you hear--"

Hikaru was quickly getting to his feet.

"Let's do lunch next week," he said as he left the room. "You're playing Isumi-san, right?"

"Yeah..."

But Hikaru was already halfway down the hallway, the memory of Akira's sobs echoing in his head, blood pulsing in his ears.

Ogata had a long stride, so he was already standing in the elevator when Hikaru rushed in without any sort of plan, just white-hot anger.

"Oh, Shindou-kun," Ogata said casually, peering through his frameless glasses down at the last inch that separated him from the rapidly-growing teenage pro. "I've been meaning to ask you for a game."

"You-- what?" Hikaru was about to yell at him, or hit him, or at the very least say something really cutting, but he didn't expect this greeting at all.

"A game, maybe a beer while we're at it."

"I don't dri--"

"Ah, right. Dinner tonight, then? On me."

"Oh. That's fine."

"Great. I'll pick you up after my match."

The elevator doors opened and Ogata sauntered out, cool as a cucumber, leaving Hikaru in there with no floor button pushed, all the steam whistling out of his ears, deflating in complete bewilderment.

***

So that was how Hikaru found himself in a tucked-away corner of an Italian-American restaurant in Shibuya later that night eating gigantic American-style portions of spaghetti, while Ogata cracked open a Yebisu and watched him kind of creepily, even when some of Hikaru's red carbonara sauce almost splashed onto his immaculate white trousers. In between giant noodle slurps, Hikaru caught a glimpse of Ogata's serious face and wondered if he wasn't the only one who was losing his mind.

"So." Ogata put two fingers to his lips, then realized he wasn't holding a cigarette and took another sip of beer instead. "I actually wanted to ask you about Akira-kun."

Hikaru sighed inwardly. "I knew it."

"I haven't talked to him lately, but... Akiko is worried about him."

At the mention of Touya's mother's name, the anger that had made Hikaru almost hit the 10-dan flared up again. His eyes flashed.

"Who cares if either of you are worried about him?" he said icily. "If you really cared, you wouldn't have done this to him."

"Ah, so he told you."

In spite of the restaurant's 'No Smoking Indoors' policy, Ogata pulled out a pack of Larks and a Zippo lighter from the breast pocket of his suit jacket, which was draped over the chair next to him.

"He did," replied Hikaru, voice emanating hatred.

Ogata put a cigarette in his mouth and flicked his lighter open. Out of the corner of his eye, Hikaru saw a waiter stomping towards them.

"It's good that he trusts you. He doesn't really have anyone else."

"Sir! Please, smoking isn't allowed inside."

"I asked for a table on the rooftop," Ogata said calmly, taking a drag of his cigarette. "But for some reason your concierge wouldn't allow it, even though I had made a reservation in advance and there was plenty of room up there."

The waiter's eyes briefly narrowed with a similar emotion to what Hikaru's face was sporting.

"I'll be sure to move you. Just a minute please."

About ten minutes later, Hikaru was finishing the last of his spaghetti (even though he was super full) at their new table on the roof, with the evening lights of central Tokyo glimmering to life around them. Ogata was on his third cigarette and his fourth beer.

"Akiko visited him every morning for months," he said, ashing his cigarette into a porcelain tray that had been thoughtfully provided for them by the miffed waiter. "She used to come in and make him breakfast, but he got the locks changed. So then she would make a bento in advance and ring the doorbell, but he never answered it."

"Where is she now?" Hikaru asked in spite of himself, mouth dry. "Does she live with you?"

"No. She left for China." He took another drag. "I believe she and Touya-sensei are going to try and work things out."

"Huh?!"

"Akira doesn't know this yet because he hasn't talked to any of us since then," said the older man, draining his beer. "Maybe you can fill him in.

"His mother is so much younger than Sensei-- she's closer to my age than she is to his. When he started going abroad, she started to see that people didn't treat them as equals. Then she started to think that maybe this wasn't the life she originally wanted for herself. She was starting her own career before she married, you know."

Ogata adjusted his eyeglasses on both sides with his cigarette-free hand, but Hikaru sensed that he might have just been hiding his eyes.

"It was only when she lost both of them..."

"...that she realized how much she loved them," Hikaru finished for him, heart constricting in his chest with a familiar feeling, and Ogata laughed one single painful, miserable laugh.

"Right."

The next beer Ogata had ordered appeared on the table, but Hikaru swiftly grabbed it and drank it himself.

"Hey!" Ogata's nose wrinkled. "That's mine, you brat!"

"Well, you can't get too drunk if we're still gonna play a game tonight," Hikaru taunted, then chugged the rest in a hurry, before Ogata could reach across the table to snatch it out of his hands.

***

After chugging an entire beer for the first time (which was bitter and disgusting), Hikaru got tipsy fast. But Ogata was totally smashed, so by the time they managed to get a taxi to Ogata's place (Hikaru literally wrestled him into a taxi so Ogata wouldn't do something stupid, like drive) and start the game, Hikaru knew the man would go down easily. It was still a fun game to play, with Ogata's prowess occasionally coming through, sharp barbs that needled themselves around Hikaru's white formations but ultimately couldn't surround them. Hikaru won by resignation when they were almost at yose, which was about an hour and another four beers later.

"Not bad, kid."

The tall blond stood up and adjusted his glasses, which were askew from him resting his face in his hands.

"Tell Akira-kun that we're all sorry for what we put him through."

Ogata stumbled away to maybe throw up and pass out in his bed, but the younger pro stayed another twenty or so minutes to stare at the board, tears in the corners of his eyes, lost in thought.

Only he could see the other game overlaid on this one-- the other game that he once played against drunk Ogata 10-dan, or rather, the other game that Sai once played.

Sai's last complete game.

Maybe he could show it to Akira sometime.

Then again, maybe not.

***

"You WHAT?!"

"He asked ME, I swear! It wasn't like I wanted to!"

This was not how Hikaru imagined this conversation going, but going into it he knew that there was a nonzero chance Akira would be livid that Hikaru went and spent an enjoyable evening with his mother's lover. So he gritted his teeth and grimly watched Akira lose his cool.

They were back in Hikaru's house, sitting at a table in the kitchen after the halfway point of a game they were playing in his room, eating Mrs. Shindou's bento lunches since she was out visiting relatives in Saitama, when Hikaru disclosed what had happened with Ogata-sensei the previous week. As you can see, it didn't go over very well.

Akira took a deep breath to calm himself and undid the ponytail he had tied when they started playing that morning, then ran a hand through his dark hair, which was now well past his shoulders. Hikaru could feel his breath hitch as he watched; he immediately buried it to focus on his rival's words.

"What did he want?" snapped Akira, eyes filled with anger.

"H-- he asked about you," Hikaru stammered. "Apparently your parents are trying to get back together. He wanted you to know. He... he didn't look like he was doing so hot."

Akira scrutinized the nervous look on Hikaru's face, then settled back down onto his zabuton.

"Good," he responded with a smirk, but there wasn't much satisfaction in his tone.

"We went back to his place and played a game of go, but he was so drunk he lost pretty easily," Hikaru continued. "And when he resigned, he said to tell you 'Sorry for everything we put you through', or something like that."

Silence settled like a heavy weight on the room as Akira mulled over Hikaru's words. The half-blond had absentmindedly balled his hands into fists and looked for something to grip, but he'd left his fan next to the goban upstairs in his room, so he forced himself to relax and curl his hands around the grownup-looking dark blue bento box he was eating teriyaki chicken out of. His mother now used the same lunchboxes for him and his dad.

"Well," said Akira finally, "Thanks for having that conversation so I won't have to."

"I'm just glad that it's over," Hikaru said, relieved that his rival was still talking to him. "It was sooooo awkward. Going into it I thought I had to like, I don't know, avenge you or something."

"Avenge me?" Akira raised an eyebrow. "For what?"

"B-- because." Hikaru gulped. Now THIS was awkward. "They hurt you."

"They didn't hurt me that bad," scoffed Akira. "All things considered."

"What do you mean? You cried!"

"I-- I was just a little shaken up, that's all," Akira replied, flushing. "I should have acted more mature about it. Adults-- people do things like that all the time."

The long-haired teen let out a sigh and took a sip of green tea, eyes closed.

"It's good that Mother and Father are on speaking terms again," he said. "Maybe she'll come back and live in the house again. I was thinking about moving out, anyway."

Hikaru stared at him in disbelief. Akira couldn't possibly be this composed.

"Didn't you change the locks on your doors?" the blond asked before he could stop himself. "So that your mom couldn't come in?"

Akira's eyes flew open.

"That was so no one could enter the house without permission!" he said, voice raised to the point of shouting, tea almost spilling onto the table. "It was so I didn't have to keep walking in on--"

The teen went quiet again and straightened his posture.

"What else did he say about me?" he asked Hikaru, blue eyes narrowed, voice so low it was almost a growl. If he hadn't been sweating bullets just then, Hikaru would have found it deathly attractive.

"Um, it was mostly about your mom," Hikaru said meekly. "That she still-- she still loves your dad. And you. So she left him to try to get back with your dad. Sorry that I know all this stuff now," he added in a small voice, wincing.

Akira's sullen face slowly softened as he looked back at Hikaru. "I'm sorry that you're caught in the middle of this," he said. "Ogata-san knew that he could get through to me by using you."

Something about how Akira stated that fact swelled something inside Hikaru's chest, but as usual, he tried to beat it back down with a baseball bat. Unfortunately, he neglected to address the stupid-looking smile that his mouth broke into involuntarily.

"So I'm moving out, probably," Akira said, eyes now fixed on his half-finished bento. "If I do, want to be my roommate?"

"Roommate?!"

The smile was instantly wiped off Hikaru's face as he went quiet, trying to find a good way to turn this down, because he knew being roommates was definitely not going to end well.

Not if he couldn't manage this whole falling in love thing properly.

Akira poked at his last piece of chicken with his chopsticks, deep in thought.

"Just let me know what your budget is and I'll find a place that we can both--"

"Ah, I think I'm gonna stay home for now," Hikaru cut in quickly, palms out, sheepish. "It'd be nice to save money, and I still don't know how to cook, so...

"If that's the problem, I can--"

"I've also-- I've got some issues I need to work on first," Hikaru added in a weird, kind of strangled voice, picking up his chopsticks and giving them a slow squeeze. His stomach was twisting again, but he had to stop this idea before it got out of hand. "I don't think I can deal with a big change right now. You understand, right?"

"What kind of issues--" Akira began, but he stopped mid-sentence. Hikaru heard it anyway.

"What kind of issues?" the blond retorted sarcastically. "You're wondering what issues I have when I haven't won a match in months?"

"A change of scene might make things better!"

"But living with you might make things worse!"

The other boy went silent. He had been getting more animated, but at this last outburst, his face fell. Hikaru's heart fell along with it. Yet again, his mouth got ahead of him.

"Sorry. That's really not what I meant."

"What did you mean, then?"

Hikaru painfully held Akira's gaze for a protracted moment, then turned away from him and stood up so the other boy wouldn't notice that his eyes were filling with tears.

"Let's finish our game," Hikaru said quietly, closing his bento box. "It's getting cold in here."

He left the kitchen and padded up the stairs to his room, knowing that Akira would follow. But when he reached for the doorknob, a slim hand covered his own.

When he dared look back, he saw a dark surge of hair and felt a skin-to-skin collision right on his face, noses bumping, clothes rustling, a hand cradling the back of his head. Hikaru let out a cry of surprise when he realized he was pinned to his bedroom door and Akira's mouth was about to cover his own.

And then it did, muffling him, an odd sensation of full wetness, a little rough at the edges. It tasted faintly salty, but Akira's cologne smelled sweet. Hikaru's mind could hardly comprehend it before everything was replaced by air. He opened his eyes to find Akira at arms' length, pushed away by Hikaru's own hands, searching the blond's face for an answer.

But Hikaru stood there frozen, tingling at all ends, eyes staring vacantly as his brain tried to get something, anything, through the thick mess of tangled nerves felled by his hurricane of emotions. He was breathing hard, mouth slightly open, the way Akira's mouth left it. His hair was still mussed in the back from Akira's fingers running through it. The tears on his cheeks were still drying. He couldn't tell if his heart was racing or if it had stopped altogether.

Half a minute passed like this, and Akira's expression turned mortified. He haltingly backed away.

"I'm s-- I'm sorry," he stammered. He briefly sat on the top landing of the stairs, then thought better of it and shot up to leave with an uncharacteristically graceless stumble. "I'm so sorry, I completely misread-- I thought--" One hand flew to his mouth. "Oh my god..."

"*Wait*--"

Hikaru finally found his voice again, but it was too late. Akira had rushed down the stairs and managed to put his loafers on and run out of the house before Hikaru could notice the tears threatening to completely obscure his vision.

***

Hikaru's next twenty-four hours were a blur. He could hardly sleep, and when his mother tried to ask him about his friend who came over for games sometimes, he gave an "mm-hm" to nothing in particular and continued staring into his untouched lunch. He went back to his room at the earliest possible opportunity, but then he just lay in bed on top of his sheets until evening, staring at the shadowy ceiling.

There was no way he'd remembered that right.

And even if he had...

Hikaru shook his head vigorously into his pillow to dislodge any shred of hope of pursuing this strange infatuation from his brain. It wouldn't do any good to fantasize, so why bother?

Even if he had remembered correctly, it wasn't as if it was going to be possible to do anything about it.

Even if Akira did like him like that, it wasn't as if everyone they knew was going to be okay with it.

Even if Akira wanted this, Hikaru would probably end up losing him, too.

Even if Akira loved him...

The blond let out a loud, defeated sigh that was more like a sob, and covered his tear-streaked face with his hands.

***

Hikaru won his game at the Go Institute the following week. He spent the entire time wondering if Akira would come in that day and watch. The win broke his losing streak at long last, but even without Akira observing him, it had been so exhausting to play with his heart pounding the whole time that it still felt like a loss.

*** To be continued ***


	5. Tobi

Hikaru visited the Touyas' go salon sometime after that, hoping to catch Akira in a public place so as not to get all his feelings mixed up, which seemed to always lead to Hikaru looking and acting brainless.

Akira was in his regular corner of the salon, recreating a game by himself, his back to the entrance. Hikaru crept up behind him and peeked over his shoulder; he recognized the game as a Sai game, the one where he played a huge comeback win on a customer's half-finished game over Gokiso 5-dan (at the time) to clear a false Shuusaku goban from the sellers' table at a go festival.

Hikaru had recreated it for the long-haired boy before, but he hadn't shared the circumstances under which the game was played. He felt a pang as he saw Akira frown at every move, deep in contemplation.

He should have told him everything.

"Hi Touya," he said shyly, right in Akira's ear, startling the young pro and sending stones flying everywhere. Akira whipped his head back to give Hikaru an indignant glare.

"Don't scare me like that!"

But Akira's face crumpled for a second as he met Hikaru's eyes. It was quick, but the half-blond couldn't help but notice it, even under the irritation that slipped over Akira's features immediately after.

"My bad," said Hikaru sheepishly, picking stones up off the floor. They weren't glass, so none of them had gotten chipped. His heart might have, though.

They played a normal game, pretending like nothing had happened between them just a couple of weeks ago, and Hikaru won by six moku. Unlike most of their matches, where they fought loudly over each others' moves, they both remained silent, and Akira excused himself as soon as the game was over.

His eyes had been trained on Akira the entire game, but once his rival was gone, Hikaru stared at the board in dismay. This was nothing like Akira's go. There was no precision, no measured calculation to his hands-- just a mindless following of prescribed moves, copies of moves from other games, indifferent plays.

It was soulless.

After several minutes, Akira returned to his seat and gave Hikaru a long look. His puffy aquamarine eyes made it clear that he'd been crying.

Hikaru studied the boy's eyes and felt like he was spinning down into an abyss. He wanted to touch Akira's face and wipe the tears away like he did that one time. But this time they were in public, and he was the reason for them.

"This is no good," was all Hikaru could bring himself to say, not looking away.

"This is bad," Akira agreed faintly, turning a light shade of pink.

"Hmm."

They might have spent an hour just staring at each other after that, neither of them could tell. The cute salon receptionist, Ichikawa-san, would have told them it was about ten minutes; she and the other patrons noticed how weirdly quiet the two of them had been all day, so she was paying extra close attention.

"I'm gonna go home," Hikaru said finally, standing up. "I'll be back next week. Maybe we can try again then."

"What? Try again?"

Hikaru gave his rival an even but challenging glare.

"Well, we'll keep trying to do this until it works itself out, right? Until everything's back to normal?"

The expression on Akira's face was blank, doll-like, as he nodded.

The blond gave a little nod in return and headed for the exit, taking his backpack tentatively as Ichikawa held it out for him, with none of the usual force he used when he'd leave the salon in a huff.

***

Their game following week was still bad, but a little bit better. Maybe it was because Akira hadn't been taken by surprise this time. Or maybe it was because Hikaru had started teasing him again.

Akira still lost, though. The silence in the go salon was deafening when he resigned. That was probably why Akira decided to walk with Hikaru to the subway station instead of hang around the salon for more teaching games like he sometimes did. Word had gotten out about his family situation, which everyone assumed was what was affecting his go, and the old men didn't want to gossip about anything with him still in the room.

The two young pros fell into step together through the dark narrow streets, light coats just enough protection against the fall breeze. Hikaru wondered what his rival was thinking, and whether the pain in his chest would ever subside.

"You're doing the commentary for the Ouza title match in two weeks, right?" Hikaru asked. Akira bowed his head.

"Yes, with Ashiwara-san." The tone was polite, like he was making small talk with a stranger. Hikaru's eyebrows furrowed with anxiety.

"I wanna go check it out," he said, then quickly added, "If that's okay with you."

"That's fine."

It was then, in the light of the station, that he noticed Akira's eyes were red-rimmed. He looked like he hadn't slept. Or eaten, for that matter; his cheekbones looked entirely too pronounced.

"Want to do dinner?" the blond asked hopefully, half-expecting the response.

"No." Akira shifted his feet, staring at the curb. "But thank you."

"Okay," Hikaru said with a melodramatic sigh. "Just... You're eating when you're by yourself, right? Don't end up in the hospital again."

Akira could only meet his eyes with a forlorn resignation that was swiftly replaced by a mask of indifference. But Hikaru could read him well, could see that past all the masks, the real Akira was somewhere in there, broken.

They stood at the station entrance and regarded each other warily, features brought into stark relief by the boundary of dark and light.

"Maybe it would be better if I did," Akira said under his breath.

"What?" Hikaru wasn't sure he heard that right, but he was worried that he had, so he drew himself closer. "Don't say that."

"What do you think dying is like?"

It was a non sequitur, but it had the effect of slapping Hikaru awake. He stepped in, right to Akira's blank face, and the fear in his green eyes penetrated Akira's glassy blue.

"Don't say that," he repeated, voice suddenly tinged with anger. "Don't even think about it."

"M-- maybe I should at least see a doctor," Akira clarified after a while, a little more surely this time, even though it sounded as if something had caught in his throat. "I could stand to get my head examined."

"If you do, schedule an appointment for me, too," Hikaru said, visibly relaxing, but with his gaze still trained on the other boy's face. The tone was almost joking, but his eyes remained calm and serious, staring past Akira, lost in his own memories.

It was late, so the station entrance was empty, and no one else was around to notice that the two young men were only a few inches away from each other now. Akira was eyeing the half-blond strangely.

"What?" Hikaru asked, unnerved, thoughts still full of Sai.

"Who are you looking at?" Akira inquired in return.

At a loss for a reply, Hikaru pulled Akira in by the nape of his neck and kissed him.

It wasn't anything like the first kiss, the one that Akira stole; Akira gasped in shock against Hikaru's mouth, but then he kissed back, parted his lips and let Hikaru clumsily explore through them with his tongue. They were breathing hard, bumping noses, hands tentatively exploring each others' shoulders and hips. And when it was over, when the faraway sound of a train honking its horn broke the stillness only a few seconds later, they broke apart as if they'd been stung.

Akira wiped his mouth with the back of one hand, glaring at his rival.

"What the hell was that?" he demanded, blue eyes finally piercing through steel again, voice threatening to give way to a shout. Hikaru could hardly hear him over the pounding of his heart.

"I..." Hikaru faltered upon remembering the taste of Akira's mouth. "I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?!"

Okay, Akira was definitely shouting now.

"I-- I kissed you," Hikaru said in a tiny voice. Steam was practically coming out of Akira's ears.

"I NOTICED THAT MUCH, MR. OBVIOUS."

"...I thought it'd cheer you up?"

At this, Akira hesitated.

"But you..." The long-haired boy swallowed hard. "I thought you didn't want to get into this."

Hikaru looked down at the sidewalk, hands jammed back into his pockets, sighing. "Yeah. I don't."

"Then don't mess around with me," came the searing reply.

"How was that messing around?!"

"Did you ever stop to think about what you're doing to me?" Akira roared.

"You did it first!" Hikaru cried back, not sure what else to say.

"That was a MISTAKE, okay?!" screamed the other boy, but then his voice began to break. "That was just a mistake."

Hikaru glanced up and realized that the anguished look on the boy's face was probably the same look Hikaru gave him every day they were together. He shelved his thoughts about Akira's trembling lower lip and forced himself to turn away.

"This isn't gonna work out, I think," Hikaru could hear himself saying. "But I don't wanna lose you."

"Well, you're definitely going to if you do that again," Akira replied bitterly.

"A train is coming shortly," said the automated announcer. "Please stand behind the yellow line."

Without waiting for the other boy, Hikaru swiped in.

***

This wasn't going to work. It was clear from the get-go that he and Akira couldn't be friends with their feelings hanging unspoken between them. Hikaru had refused to believe that, so he pressed on and showed up once a week to the Touyas' go salon as usual, even when he couldn't sleep from nerves the night before.

The two had begun to win more of their professional matches lately, and in them their moves were full of fire and inspiration and each other's signature styles. But when they actually played against each other, their hands were horrible. It was kind of comical how bad their go was right now, except whenever Hikaru thought about laughing at their predicament, he'd glance up and find Akira silent on the other side of the goban, trying not to look miserable.

They cleaned up Akira's next loss, finishing right at the go salon's closing time, and walked to the train station in the dark together, even though the air was tense and uncomfortable between them.

"Have you talked to your parents?" Hikaru asked finally. Akira nodded.

"Yes," he said. "I'm moving out next month."

"Oh, so you found a place already?" It took Waya months to find a spot he could afford, but Akira obviously didn't have much trouble when it came to money.

"Actually, Ogata-san helped me find it."

"Whaaaat?!"

Hikaru's face must have contorted into a field of cartoon sweatdrops or something, because Akira eked out a laugh. Hikaru found it surprisingly gut-wrenching. It was the first laugh that he had gotten out of him in a while.

"I spoke with everyone separately," Akira told him, mature as ever. "My mother wasn't too happy about my moving out, but my father was."

The teen turned red and ran a hand through his ever-lengthening hair.

"I think he probably wants to have lots of time for just the two of them right now."

Hikaru stared at Akira in disbelief, trying not to think about the former Meijin doing... well, anyway, it was his turn to laugh.

"So I guess even Touya-sensei cares about other things besides go," Hikaru said after the laughing fit was over.

They stopped at an intersection under a streetlight; Akira gave him a sidelong look.

"Father knows the things he can't play go without," he said simply.

They got to the empty train station and stood by the entrance, just facing each other, hands in their jacket pockets, waiting. The train announcer's automated voice echoed through the open area: "A train is coming shortly..."

"I can't play go without you," Hikaru blurted out.

Akira let out a doleful sigh.

"You can't really play WITH me right now, either," he gently reminded Hikaru.

"I-- I'm working on it!" the blond sputtered defensively.

"...I am, too."

Neither of them said anything else for a while; they just stood a little further apart than usual, eyes roaming over each others' faces. After a while, Akira turned away from Hikaru and quietly began to wipe his eyes with one of his shirtsleeves. 

Hikaru, in spite of himself, reached across the distance between them to grab the boy's wrist and pull him into a tight hug as a train roared into the station.

"I'm sorry, Akira," was all he could manage to murmur into Akira's ear. "I'm so sorry."

Akira broke into muffled sobs at the sound of his name, face buried in Hikaru's shoulder. A minute later, he tore himself away, avoiding the blond's concerned eyes, and ran up the steps to catch his train.

Hikaru felt his shoulder with a shaky hand and found it damp. He touched his own eyes to the same spot on his jacket so Akira's tears weren't alone.

***

The commentary for the Ouza title match was held in a large, dark room on the sixth floor of the Go Institute. Hikaru found it kind of stuffy, especially with his unusually formal argyle sweater on, and a little too fluorescent, but Waya nudged him inside anyway.

Most of the lights were focused on the large go board onstage, where Akira and Ashiwara were placing magnetic black and white go pieces. Their blazers were off under the hot lights, but they were speaking with authority and ease. Akira was explaining how a hane would have been much better for the challenger to play than the knight's move that he ultimately did.

"But Kurata probably saw that knight's move and took it to mean that Zama-sensei was maybe insulting him by cutting in so far," Ashiwara added, and the audience laughed, Akira along with them. Hikaru wasn't sure why, but all he could think about was how easily Akira and the good-looking twentysomething pro were bantering back and forth. It didn't help when Ashiwara made it clear that he could call the long-haired young man over from across the stage with a simple "Akira", no last name, no decorations necessary.

After a few hours, though, Akira looked out at the crowd, shielding his eyes against the bright stage lights with one hand and holding his microphone in the other. He found Hikaru's unmistakable hair near the back of the room. It was Ashiwara's turn to continue narrating the fight on the goban, so all eyes were on him and the board, and only Hikaru was really watching, heart racing, as Akira's face went from deer-in-headlights to a smile.

"Akira," Ashiwara's voice interrupted. "What do you think of this formation in the lower left? Do you think Kurata will make it through?"

Akira's eyes lingered on Hikaru before he turned back.

"Hmm, let's see."

He ran a hand all the way through his long hair, which was almost to his shoulder blades, then picked up a few magnetic pieces and began to attack Zama-sensei's line on the board. As he did so, Hikaru imagined what it would be like to get his fingers tangled up in Akira's hair while kissing him, and he was glad that the rest of the room was fairly dim in comparison to the stage, because his face was slowly burning up. That would have been fine by itself if it hadn't been followed by a disastrous twinge down below.

Hikaru discreetly excused himself and hurried to the restroom to pour cold water on his face before things got embarrassing. He couldn't get the image out of his head, the image of combing through Akira's hair, looping dark ringlets of it around his fingers as Akira-- what would Akira be doing while he did this?-- oh, no...

He texted Waya and said he'd felt a little sick and was going home. It wasn't totally a lie. But when he finally locked his door and closed the blinds and climbed into bed and immediately took matters into his own hands, imagining Akira's hair fanned out underneath him as he hurriedly, urgently brought himself to release, he felt the words "Akira" and "I love you" quietly tumble off of his lips, and understood exactly what it was that he was really lying about.

***

The next time they saw each other was a few days later, on Hikaru's eighteenth birthday. Hikaru didn't want to do anything special that day, especially since he didn't want to face all his go friends until he began winning the majority of his matches. But when Akira suggested lunch and a friendly match, he readily agreed for some reason, then hung up the house phone and sank to the floor as soon as he realized that, given the circumstances, it kind of sounded like a date.

They met at Ikebukuro Station. Akira was in a navy suit for his match earlier that day, but had taken his jacket off despite the chilly breeze. Hikaru waved at him from across the station, in his usual jeans but with a collared shirt because he didn't know what his rival had in mind for dinner. He suspected that Akira would take him to a ramen shop for his birthday, but Akira was equally likely to want to go to one of those fancy restaurants that Ogata liked to frequent.

However, once Hikaru took his first slurp of the bone marrow ramen that Akira had ordered and practically moaned in pleasure, he became aware of just how deeply Akira knew him. He noticed the long-haired teen's amused eyes watching him carefully and felt warm all over.

"This is reaaaaally good," were the first comprehensible words out of Hikaru's mouth when he swallowed, which didn't last long because it was immediately followed by him tipping the entire bowl's contents into his mouth, which had somehow expanded to ten times its normal size. "Thanks for taking me here."

"I'm glad you like it," Akira said, trying his hardest to suppress a smile. "This is one of Father's favorite ramen shops."

"The man has good taste," Hikaru declared. "Guess I thought he'd be more into sushi like you." He turned back to the chef. "Hey mister, more noodles, please!"

The chef on the other side of the counter crossed his beefy arms and gave Hikaru a look of surprise.

"How the hell did you finish an entire bowl in five seconds, kid?!"

***

They were at Ikebukuro Station and getting on the train home when Hikaru spoke up.

"Actually... could we stop by Sugamo first?" he asked softly. "It's the next stop."

It was ten minutes from Sugamo Station to Honmyouji Temple, and Hikaru was silent the whole walk there. Once Akira got a glimpse of the graves on the way in, though, he froze in recognition.

"This is..." The long-haired boy studied the old wooden signs lining the stone wall next to them. "This is where the Honinbou family is buried."

"Yeah," Hikaru confirmed, a little uneasy. "I just wanted to pay my respects."

He hesitated as he stepped over the raised temple door frame, and glanced back at Akira, who seemed reluctant to enter.

"You can stay here if you want. I'll be quick."

Akira gave him a long look.

"Do you want me to? Stay here, I mean."

"If you don't like hanging out with ghosts, that's fine," said Hikaru, mouth a firm line. "But if you're okay with that... I'd like to you to come."

Akira stepped inside.

Shuusaku's grave wasn't far from the entrance. They purchased some incense at the temple shop and lit it on his grave marker. Akira watched the half-blond as he clasped his hands together in prayer, eyes closed, for what seemed like forever. Neither of them said anything until they left.

"Were you talking to him?" Akira asked curiously as they walked back to the station. From the guilty look on his face, it seemed like he'd been trying not to ask. Hikaru tensed up at once.

"Um, kind of." He gave a short, nervous laugh as he rubbed the back of his head. "Please don't tell anyone."

"Of course not," said Akira matter-of-factly, smoothing out his jacket before putting it back on. "I never have."

***

They got to Hikaru's house just as night fell. Mrs. Shindou opened the door.

"Did you have a good birthday, Hikaru?" she asked as the pair took their shoes off in the genkan.

"Yeah, we just went to get some ramen," he said with a shrug. "Oh, Akira wanted to thank you for the bento from last time," he added, then mentally cringed as he realized he should have used 'Touya'.

"Yes, thank you," said Akira with a bow, poise unaffected. Maybe no one noticed. "They were delicious."

Mrs. Shindou smiled. "Do you boys want some cake? I know you didn't want a party or anything, Hikaru, but I saw it in the bakery and just couldn't resist."

"Thanks!" Hikaru replied, beads of sweat beginning to form on his temples. "We're gonna play a game in my room, though."

"Cake sounds great, thank you," Akira said politely.

"All right, I'll bring some up then."

***

"Why did your mother draw tiny hearts in jam on top of our slices of cake?"

"Whaaa... I have no idea."

"The jam pairs well with the frosting, though. It's good."

"Yeah, she's a fan of pears."

"Oh, me too."

***

They were more than halfway into the game when they started bickering.

"You're losing."

"Am not!"

"That hand," Akira pointed to the lower right corner where black had messed up a joseki, "cost you the game."

"I can still come back from that!"

"Where? Because I've taken over the board."

"'Taken over' my ass."

"Can it, Shindou," said the long-haired boy evenly.

"You started it."

The silence lasted for over a minute.

"So why'd you stop calling me Hikaru?" asked the blond without warning-- without thinking, really, as usual. "You said it before, but then..."

Akira glanced up at him, then quickly stared back down at the goban.

"You..." he put another stone down and raised a knuckle to his lips in thought. It took him several minutes.

"You seemed hurt the last time I said it. Like it reminded you of something sad.

"Or maybe... it reminded you of him."

Hikaru saw the way Akira's brow furrowed as he said this last part. He gave the boy a small smile, but Akira didn't see it.

"You're right," he said. "It does."

With his heart thumping in his ears, he placed a black stone down by the bottom edge, putting one of Akira's stones in atari, and his rival quickly countered with a one-point jump.

"But I love hearing you say it."

He put another stone down, a two-point jump from the right side where white's impassable formation had the clear advantage, and smiled while he watched Akira's eyes go wide, fighting to keep his composure as a deep blush slowly crept across his face.

Hikaru knew the move changed everything. His strange-looking plays the entire game made perfect sense now. With all his mistakes it seemed like black had been sure to lose, but in a few more hands, white would be surrounded.

Akira was captured.

*** To be continued ***


	6. Tsuke

Hikaru stayed quiet under his covers long after he woke up early the next morning. His thoughts were a jumbled mess of dreams and memories, both from the previous night and years prior. His body felt like it was burning, suffocating him with emotions he had fought and successfully controlled for so long. But now, in the lingering stillness of dawn, as his fading dreams left him utterly exposed to the icy barbs of reality, he felt everything.

***

"I... resign."

As soon as their game ended, Akira had gotten up to leave, and Hikaru had followed him to the door. But instead of pulling the door open, Akira had turned around. Hikaru tripped forward in surprise, pinning his rival against the door; then their mouths found each other, kissing as naturally as they breathed.

But then the kiss deepened, and their lips and tongues were desperately fighting for dominance, gasps for air audible in the nighttime silence. Hikaru, without thinking, pressed a rough palm against Akira's chest to keep him there, forcing the wind out of the boy's lungs as he lifted his mouth.

"What are you--"

Akira's whispered words were overtaken by a sharp gasp as Hikaru nosed his face into the boy's neck and bit down. At the same time, his hands ran down the length of Akira's shirt, down to his sides, to the belt of his neatly-pressed blue trousers; as the blond got on his knees, he glanced one last time up at his rival's face looking down at him, aquamarine eyes darkened by pupils blown open in shock, before he focused on undoing the belt and zipper in front of him.

"No-- wait-- *Hikaru*--"

Akira tipped his head against the door, eyes shut tight at the sensation engulfing him, and bit back a cry.

***

"Hikaru."

He'd fallen asleep expecting to dream about Akira, but out of the darkness of this reverie, an otherworldly face swam into view from below.

Pale skin and lips. Long dark hair.

A tall hat.

Hikaru felt like he was underwater, heaviness pressing in all around him. He reached down with a trembling hand and swept a few stray strands of hair away from the other man's face, testing to see whether he could touch him, then carefully lifted the man's chin with his fingers to examine those deep gray eyes.

"Sai," he breathed.

The man smiled a slow, wistful smile, and Hikaru's chest tightened with a long-forgotten ache, a deep, familiar pain he knew they shared, since Hikaru had always felt the man's emotions as plainly as he felt his own.

Hikaru jolted awake just as he dipped down and wrapped his arms around the man, sending long hair flying everywhere, leaning into Sai's myriad layers of kariginu robes to press against the thin body underneath. The blond let out a frustrated moan as he opened his eyes and realized that there was no one in his embrace, and the heartache he felt in his dream manifested itself in reality, fresh and all the more painful for being unadorned by the fog of sleep.

***

After swallowing the last traces of pleasure and wiping his mouth on his sleeve, Hikaru pulled away and rocked back on his heels, dazed. The faint salty taste in his mouth was enough to make him dizzy. But then he stared back up at Akira, whose lean form was still slightly hunched against the door, mouth parted, breathing still ragged, face still flushed; Hikaru's own breath hitched at the sight of weary blue eyes peeking open and meeting his.

"Why?" came Akira's hoarse, pained voice. "Why are you doing this to me?

"Why are you doing this when you don't..."

His words broke off in what sounded suspiciously like a sob. Hikaru's heart ached in confusion; he got up and tried to wrap his arms around the long-haired boy, but was pushed away so roughly that he fell back, sprawled out, onto the floor. He sat up on his elbows and looked on helplessly as Akira covered his face in his hands and drew a few deep, shaky breaths, then quickly fumbled at his belt to buckle it and zip up. With a final cutting glance at Hikaru's anguished face, he turned around, yanked the door open, and fled.

***

The first time Hikaru could remember experiencing this heart-rending pain was the night he passed the pro exam a few years earlier. He had awakened with a start, heart hammering, and saw Sai sitting seiza between the goban and his bed, keeping watch over him as usual. He thought he had just had a nightmare, but when he met Sai's forlorn eyes, a fresh pang seized Hikaru's chest so thoroughly that it radiated agony throughout his entire body.

He was staring at Sai, who winced at the sudden wave of emotion he had unwittingly unleashed. He had clearly assumed the boy was asleep. The feeling was not unlike the one time Hikaru said he had no desire to play go, when the resulting soul-crushing misery he felt from Sai at perhaps never being able to play again made him throw up.

But this misery was mutual, and Hikaru realized it stemmed from something far more intimate and unspoken between them. It was unspoken because the root was so clear--

"Oh," was all Hikaru could utter, eyes wide. "*Oh*."

***

As he heard the front door click shut with a dull finality, Hikaru noticed that Akira's blue blazer was still where the boy had left it, draped over a chair next to his bed. The half-blond ignored it and headed down the hall to the bathroom sink to wash up and get ready for sleep. But when he returned to his room, he picked the jacket up and buried his face inside, just underneath the collar. It smelled like a lightly musky cologne with a hint of sweet-smelling shampoo.

It smelled like Akira, and the gravity of what he'd done hit Hikaru hard. He collapsed onto his bed, still clutching the blazer, and burst into tears.

***

Weeks passed before Hikaru got the chance to spend time with Akira again. He began to think that his rival was avoiding him. At the Institute, they were back to exchanging pleasantries, calling each other "Shindou" and "Touya", surrounded by their peers. Hikaru longed for a chance to catch Akira alone, hoping to hear his given name come from his rival's mouth, which would give Hikaru the start of an answer to his unvoiced questions-- "Do you want to keep doing this," or maybe, "Will you forgive me".

They managed to run into each other walking to the train station after their matches one afternoon. When Hikaru spotted the long-haired boy walking a few paces in front of him, it took all of his willpower not to melt into the ground.

"Where ya headed?" he asked as he adjusted his checkered yellow scarf and ran up to his rival. He often saw the boy getting dropped off and picked up at the Institute by a taxi or car as of late, so this was unusual.

"My new apartment's in Azabu," said Akira. "I had to drive my things over in batches, but now I'm almost moved in."

"Azabu?" Hikaru repeated. "Wow, fancy."

Akira dug his hands into his coat pockets. "It wasn't my idea," he said, mildly annoyed, if the faint wrinkle in his nose was any indication.

"I thought you said Ogata-san helped you pick it out."

"He did." He sighed. "It's honestly more than what I wanted. But my parents insisted on taking his recommendation. I think it served as a peace offering."

"Hell of a peace offering," said Hikaru ruefully. His parents weren't about to help him pay for an apartment, much less help him upgrade to an even fancier one in the fanciest neighborhood of Tokyo, even if they wanted to do it out of guilt. "Want me to help you finish moving the last of your stuff?"

***

And that's how Hikaru signed up to help Akira haul several hundred pounds' worth of furniture from the lobby into his new apartment. (It was really just the kitchen table and four chairs for it, but those were all real wood and ridiculously heavy.) Winter was sneaking up on them, so Hikaru hardly broke a sweat...

...until Akira finally closed the front door, took his shoes off in the genkan, loosened his pinstriped tie, and sat on his gray midcentury couch, and Hikaru realized with an adrenaline-spiked jolt that they were alone for the first time since his birthday.

"Man, that was heavy!" the half-blond yawned as casually as he could while he sprawled himself out on the opposite end of the couch. "So you gonna buy me dinner or what?"

"Ugh, of course you did all this just for food."

Akira threw him an exasperated look, but fished out his cell phone from the pocket of his gray trousers and disappeared around the corner. Hikaru took that minute to examine the apartment. The small concrete-floored living room was minimally furnished, with just the couch, a shaggy blue rug, and a similarly retro spindly-legged wooden coffee table, but there was a porthole set into the concrete wall that opened into the building's atrium, and the far wall was a floor-to-ceiling glass window with a stunning view of Tokyo Tower as the stormy sky changed colors for an incredible sunset.

The long-haired pro re-emerged as he was hanging up.

"I got a few platters for us to share," he told the half-blond. "They said it would take about an hour."

Hikaru was going to pout about the fact that he wasn't consulted on the order (and why was it going to take so damn long?!), but he wasn't picky to begin with and was definitely not about to look a gourmet gift dinner in the mouth. "Where's the goban?"

"In the washitsu," Akira replied. "Want to play?"

"You have your own tatami room in a Western apartment?" Hikaru tried not to let his mouth fall to the floor.

"Both of the rooms are tatami," said the other boy as he stood and padded around the corner to the raised platform of the narrow wood-paneled hallway next to the window wall. Hikaru followed and realized that the window wall ran down the length of the short hallway, offering a panorama view. "They're hidden so it would be a pain to use one to receive guests. But I guess it could be useful if I'm tutoring. Or if I get a roommate."

The word "roommate" rang in the empty silence, threatening to conjure up the unwanted memory of when Hikaru had turned down the proposition. But Akira slid the shoji door open with a bit more force than was necessary, and upon stepping in, Hikaru couldn't help but mutter, "Okay, I kinda regret not being your roommate."

The room was smaller than the living room, but still the size of Waya's entire studio apartment, and covered in what were clearly actual straw mats, because they smelled and felt underfoot more like the natural tatami in the Touya family's sitting room, not the easy-to-clean synthetic mats that Hikaru's grandparents used. A bluish light from the city-illuminated rainclouds in the hall windows gently lit the beige walls, which were unadorned except for dark wooden support pillars that ran up and crisscrossed on the ceiling. In one corner there was a raised alcove that held a vase of flowers and a beautifully painted hanging scroll.

They took their seats on the zabuton pillows on either side of the stately goban in the center of the room. The thick footed board looked new, unlike the kaya goban in the Touyas' sitting room, which was at least a couple of generations old (and probably cost half as much as Hikaru's house). Hikaru clutched his fan with one hand as he sat down in seiza; with his other hand, he ran a finger down one of the black lines on the board, noting its smoothness.

"This was a birthday gift from my mother," said Akira after he watched Hikaru inspect the board. He lifted the lid of the goke in front of him and picked up a handful of white stones. "She said that when she first saw it, she imagined you and me playing a game on it when we were old."

Hikaru's mouth went dry. He took a single black slate stone from his own goke and set it on the goban as Akira opened his hand and counted the number he had. His fingers brushed against the blond's hand slightly. The white stones were made of shell and gleamed iridescent in stripes as the light from the fading sunset caught their striations. The number was odd; Hikaru was black, as always.

"You and me?" Hikaru repeated in disbelief as Akira poured the white stones back into his goke. He played his first move, the upper-right star.

"You and me," Akira confirmed quietly, mirroring his opening, cheeks gaining color.

They played a few moves before he could gather the courage to go any further. Rain gently pattered on the long window in the hall. Hikaru was barely paying attention to the board, eyes on Akira's flushed face, silently willing his rival to continue.

"She told me..."

Akira put a white stone down on the upper-right star-- a jump from Hikaru's black-- and bit his lip at the memory.

"She told me I was lucky that I didn't have to lose anyone to understand what was important to me."

After a long pause, the long-haired boy nervously looked up and saw Hikaru frown as he set a black stone in keima from Akira's last move. Then Hikaru let out a heavy, resigned sigh that threatened to catch in his chest.

"Guess she knows from experience," said the blond in a low voice, finally lifting his gaze from the board to take in Akira's piercing eyes.

"Yeah."

"So." Hikaru took another deep breath as he watched Akira glance back down and make his move. "What's important to you?"

His rival paused, finger still on the white stone he attached in tsuke next to Hikaru's. Aquamarine eyes flickered up to meet dark green.

"I think you know, Hikaru."

It was barely louder than a whisper, but his name on Akira's lips set off a familiar ache inside the blond's chest that spread through his whole body like wildfire. This time, though, instead of torturous pain, it ebbed to a searing, golden warmth.

They kept playing, white pieces sneaking through Hikaru's defenses again and again. Hikaru slammed down stone after stone to keep his rival out of the universe he was building, but Akira could read him so well, and knew what he was really protecting was a hidden ko in the corner of the board that would burst into supernova at a touch.

So white launched an all-out assault on that corner ko, fangs bared, in for the kill. And just as he suspected, that tiny, almost undetectable binary star exploded into a series of blindingly fast black waves that emanated to the far reaches of the board. Then it collapsed in on itself, dragging all the nearby white formations in with it, creating a black hole Akira couldn't escape.

Not that he wanted to.

After several minutes, on the inner edge of the black hole that his fallen white pieces had left behind, Akira placed a single stone.

***

Several years into the future, when Shindou Hikaru, or Honinbou Kousai, challenges Touya Akira Meijin for his title, he remembers this game and smiles at the thought of him ever trying to build the universe by himself. But the memory also makes him too careful in his final match, avoiding Akira's approach to a ko in one corner with desperate black blasts that his rival easily deflects. He loses the game by four moku, and Touya Meijin defends his title for the fifth straight year, allowing him to use the honorary Meijin appellation for life, just like his late father.

The four moku loss is kind of humiliating for the Honinbou, who had handily beaten his rival for the Kisei title just the year before. But in the end it's worth it, because later, much later, once the press has interviewed both of them, once they review the match with their peers, once Touya changes out of the traditional kosode and hakama he's taken to wearing for his Meijin matches in honor of his dad, once they leave that beautiful five-star garden hotel in Shizuoka and take the bullet train back home to Tokyo, once they finally make it into their penthouse apartment and close the door on the perfidious hallway cameras that could verify the rumors swirling around them, once Hikaru pulls Akira into his arms and runs his fingers through the Meijin's impossibly long dark hair, once they stop kissing in the genkan against the front door and tear their gazes away from each other and sit down at the goban Akira's mother once gave him and recreate their game, Akira actually laughs for the first time since his father passed away a few months ago, and says with a smirk, blue eyes fiery: "Hikaru, you idiot, you really should have stuck with the ko."

***

The blond picked up another black piece from his goke with a trembling hand, then dropped it back in and gripped his fan instead. He bowed his head, trying to find words for the surrender that was about to overwhelm him.

They could both read far ahead, and knew that with that one stone, Akira was going to make the black hole vanish in about twenty moves and take everything over.

"I... I've got nothing."

Akira's face was a sea of calm, eyes a deeper blue in the awakening city lights than Hikaru had ever seen.

"Thank you for the game," he said, closing his eyes and bowing slightly, dark hair falling forward, before sitting back and examining the board. He reached out and idly tapped the stone that formed the ko that had decided their game.

"We should keep things like this," he murmured, not looking at Hikaru. "It'd be fine if we did just this, and nothing else."

"I'm-- I'm sorry," Hikaru suddenly confessed as Akira began to clean up, slim hands picking up the pieces on the board in tiny clicks of shell against slate. The half-blond sank from seiza, legs splayed underneath him, voice unsteady, avoiding the other boy's eyes. "I'm just... scared. Because it's not like we could hide forever. When people find out, I don't know what they'll do to us, they might--"

Akira silenced him with a smoldering look.

"Would you be sitting on the fence like this if Sai were back?"

There was no malice in his words, but Hikaru still recoiled.

"That's not the same!"

He was almost shouting, confusion tainting his voice. He wasn't sure when or how Akira had seen through his defenses, in this as in everything else.

"How is that not the same?" Akira demanded, eyes ablaze. "If he were still here, we wouldn't even be having this conversation."

The end of his accusation was tinged with what Hikaru now understood was Akira's voice on the edge of tears.

"He's gone," was all Hikaru could say.

"You can't even tell me who he was," Akira countered heavily.

Hikaru went quiet, stung. He piled black stones back into his goke without another word.

A minute later, the doorbell cut through the ringing silence with a distinct 'pin pon'.

"That's probably the delivery," Akira muttered, closing the lid of his goke and replacing it on top of the board. He flicked the living room lights on as he walked to the front door, overriding the last traces of the rainy dusk outside, shooing it back into the darkness with a flood of warm light.

When he returned to the room twenty minutes later, tie off and carrying a tray from the kitchen full of neatly rearranged sushi platters, Hikaru was still sitting in semi-darkness, recreating another game on the goban by the living room light that filtered in through the wood and paper slats of the shoji door. Akira set the tray down next to the goban, heart pounding, and sat on the zabuton to examine the game more closely.

It was an ancient one, but in white Akira could see the familiar old hands that Hikaru once used against him in the first two games they ever played. White seemed to get more aggressive and desperate as the game played on, and was clearly losing.

"This was a game from the Heian era," explained Hikaru's wavering voice as he continued to put stones down. "It was between two people who tutored the emperor in go. The winner of the game got to keep his job.

"But Black cheated and won. White was the one accused of cheating, so he was banished from the capital. He drowned himself two days later.

"The man who played white was called Fujiwara no Sai."

Hikaru laid the final stone down, then watched with a detached sort of amusement as the long-haired boy's perplexed expression twisted into dismay.

"Before I met him, he possessed Honinbou Shuusaku," he continued, returning his gaze to the board, eyeing white's ultimately fruitless offensive formations. "Torajirou was already studying go and could tell how good Sai was, so he let Sai play every game."

He smiled slightly, but without any mirth.

"I was so selfish compared to him."

Akira didn't stir, gaze fixed on the board; he only lifted his eyes to see Hikaru getting to his feet.

"Sai was a ghost, okay?" Hikaru clarified for good measure as he walked around the goban and reached down to brush the back of his hand against Akira's face. "That's why I didn't wanna tell you. He was a ghost. He probably didn't exist."

He sighed, drinking in his rival's gaze with the foresighted longing of a man staring down a future in which he's lost everything.

"I learned go from a ghost."

He traced Akira's chin with a finger.

"I loved a ghost."

He enunciated each syllable as if he were spelling something obvious out for a child.

"I'm insane."

He thought Akira would recoil at this revelation, or at least flinch. He thought it was the last time he would ever be able to look this closely into Akira's wide eyes, or touch him, before the boy started to avoid him entirely. So Hikaru threw all caution to the wind, tilted Akira's chin up towards himself with his thumb and forefinger, and leaned in.

The kiss was gentle and deep, warm and familiar. It wasn't aggressive like their last one, no tongues fighting for dominance, no lungs gasping for air. And when they parted, Hikaru looked down and expected to see a furrowed brow, a heavy sigh.

To his surprise, he saw a slow smirk play on Akira's lips.

"So I was right," were the first words out of his rival's mouth. "I was right all along."

"You believe me?" Hikaru's voice was incredulous.

"You were an elementary school student playing as well as my father, you idiot," Akira said, turning back to the goban and brushing a strand of hair away from his face with a touch of irritation at how straightforward he thought this all was. "You were a twelve-year-old who could barely hold the stones, but you were as good as the best players in history. It was as if you'd studied the ancients for longer than you'd been alive."

Hikaru let out a breath he didn't even know he was holding.

"He disappeared so quickly," he murmured, words coming out in a rush. "Like, he vanished. I fell asleep for a second, and when I woke up, he was gone. He tried to warn me for so long, but I didn't listen to him. I didn't even get to say goodbye."

He paused and leaned on the room's wooden door frame, gazing down at the rain-obscured city through the glass hallway window for a long moment before looking back.

"Akira, if I lost you like that, I don't know what I'd--"

"Hikaru. I'm in love with you."

The words hit Hikaru like a punch to the gut. He sank against the door frame to his knees, reeling. Akira remained in seiza, sheets of dark hair falling forward, eyes fixed on the goban with a strange, focused scrutiny. He reached out to rest his fingertips on the fan next to it.

"What...?"

Hikaru wasn't sure if he believed his ears right now, either.

"You don't want to get into this because you're afraid, right?" continued Akira, sitting on his hands. "You're afraid you'll lose me, too."

He only looked up long enough to give Hikaru a sidelong glance, but it was enough to send a jolt of electricity down the blond's spine.

"But... I'm terrified of losing you."

Akira smiled to himself.

"So don't worry, this is an even game. And the time limit is as long as we live."

With that, he stood up from the zabuton, walked over to Hikaru, and grabbed a fistful of the blond's shirt to pull him up, meeting him with a searing kiss. Then he thrust Hikaru out of the room, slamming him against the panoramic window that ran down the length of the hall, and pinned him there with the full length of his own body, tying the boy's tongue up with his own. It was still raining, making the city's neon glare blur in rivulets on the window. Hikaru's heart felt fit to burst; he was falling backwards into a sea of light.

***

Hours later, deep into the night, once they'd both taken their fill of each other, the two boys lay curled together in a thick quilt, side by side, skin against skin, admiring Tokyo Tower looming over them from the shiny wooden floor of the hallway.

Before they fell asleep pressed against each other like that, Akira whispered into the bleary-eyed blond's ear.

"Promise me one thing."

"What's that?"

Akira slowly laced his fingers in with Hikaru's.

"Even if anything bad ever happens between us...

"Promise me that we'll keep playing no matter what."

Hikaru could only respond with a sleepy grin.

"Always."

*** End ***


End file.
